Fourth of July Sugar Cookies

Sorry that the photo is not great.  I am having some issues with a broken camera lens.  Sugar cookies have long been the bane of my cooking existence.  I NEVER make them!  Unfortunately, with young kids, they are a necessary evil.  Cookie decorating is the joy of nearly every holiday.  I have tried and tried to get them right and they just never work out.  They are always falling apart as I try to cut them out and move them to the cookie tray.  I never have the patience to chill the dough.  They seem to require such a time commitment and they have always seemed so tempermental to me.  So at my house, when we decorate cookies, I order them already baked from my local grocery store bakery, a solution that works out fine with me for the most part.  However, there is this annoying part of me that is always bugged by the fact that I can't get something that is supposed to be such a cooking basic right.  Anyway, since the 4th of July is not typically one of those "cookie decorating holidays", so the pressure for perfect cookies would be minimal, and because I have several awesome star cookie cutters.  I decided that I was actually going to attempt some sugar cookie making.  I figured that if I volunteered to bring them the the barbeque at my parents house for the fireworks, if they bombed, I could just make something else and take it for desert.  I did in fact make some carmel popcorn to take along with these cookies because I was so unsure of my cookie making skills.  I think I may finally have figured a few things out.  I knew I had to actually chill the dough, which must be the true secret.  I have also discovered that I tend to roll the dough too thin and to cook the cookies too long.  Next time I will be a little more careful on both those points, however, note that I am suggesting there will be a next time.  I started with the most basic.  I got my recipe for the cookies from the Martha Stewart website.  It was called "Ideal Sugar Cookies".  The recipe was great,  I did use milk instead of the brandy it gave as an option, but other than that, I followed the recipe exactly.  Next time I would double the recipe, because it wasn't a ton of dough and if I am going to go to all the work of making sugar cookies, I am going to make plenty.  Here's a link to the recipe.  After the cookies had cooled completed I used a sugar cookie glaze recipe from allrecipes.com that was awesome.  Here is the link and below is what I actually did (I read some of the reviews and made a couple of changes). 

Sugar Cookie Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tblsp light corn syrup

2 tblsp milk

1tsp vanilla

Mix all ingredients together.  Then dip cookies in glaze.  (can add food coloring for varied colors)

After dipping my cookies in the white glaze, I dipped them in red, white and blue sprinkles.  They were a hit and maybe now my kids will grow up thinking that sugar cookies don't have to come in a plastic container!