Holiday Sugar Cookies

I’ve been baking holiday cookies since long before I became a pastry chef. I found a simple recipe for sugar cookies during my first year in college, and I’ve been using it—gradually improving it as my baking career progressed—ever since. Some years I’ve made so many cookies for so many people that the dough takes up an entire shelf of my refrigerator. I end up spending long hours, night after night after work, rolling out the dough, chilling it, cutting out shapes, baking the cookies, lett