Party Cookies

Carrot Cake Murder

## Ingredients

* 2 cups melted butter ***(4 sticks)***
* 2 cups powdered sugar ***(not sifted)***
* 1 cup white sugar
* 2 eggs
* 2 teaspoons vanilla ***(or any other flavoring you wish)***
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon cream of tartar ***(critical!)***
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 4¼ cup flour ***(not sifted)***
* Food coloring ***(at least 3 different colors)***
* ¼ cup white sugar ***(for later)***

## Directions

* DO NOT preheat oven yet. This dough must chill before baking.
* Melt the butter. Add the sugars and mix. Let the mixture cool to room temperature and mix in the eggs, one at a time. Then add the vanilla, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt. Mix well. Add the flour in half-cup increments, mixing after each addition.
* Divide the cookie dough into fourths and place each fourth on a piece of waxed paper. ***(You'll work with one fourth at a time.)*** Place one fourth in a bowl and stir in drops of food coloring until the dough is slightly darker than the color you want. ***(The cookies will be shade lighter after they're baked.)*** Place the colored dough back on the waxed paper and color the other three parts. ***(You can leave one part uncolored, if you like.)***
* Let the dough firm up for a few moments. Then divide each different COLOR into four parts so you have sixteen lumps of dough in all. Place a sheet of plastic wrap on your counter and roll each lump into a dough rope with your hands ***(just as if you were making bread sticks.)*** The sixteen dough ropes should be each about 12 inches long.
* To assemble, stack the dough ropes, two on the bottom, two on the top, near the edge of the plastic wrap. Squeeze them together a bit and push in the ends so they're even. Flip the edge of the plastic wrap over the top and roll them up together tightly in one multi-colored roll. Twist the ends of the plastic wrap, fold them over on top of the roll, and refrigerate the rolls as you make them. When you're all finished, you'll have four rolls of multi-colored cookie dough chilling in your refrigerator.
* let the dough chill for at least an **hour *(overnight is fine, too.)*** When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325°F, rack in the middle position.
* Put ¼ cup white sugar ***(granulated)*** in a small bowl and have it ready next to your greased cookie sheets.
* Take out one dough roll, unwrap it, and slice it into ½ inch thick rounds. ***(Each dough roll should make about 24 cookies)*** Place each round into the bowl of sugar and flip it over so it coats both sides. Position the sugarcoated rounds on a greased baking sheet, 12 to a standard sheet. Return the unused dough to the refrigerator until you're ready to slice more cookies.
* Bake the cookies at 325°F for 12 to 15 minutes, just until they begin to turn slightly golden around the edges. Cool them on the cookie sheet for a minute or two, and then transfer them to a wire rack to complete cooling.
* These cookies freeze very well if you stack them in a roll, wrap them in foil, and place the foil rolls in a freezer bag. You can also freeze the multi-colored unbaked dough rolls by leaving them in the plastic wrap and placing them in a freezer bag.

Yield: Approximately 8 dozen pretty party cookies.