I love cutout cookies.  So many fun memories from when I was little, making them with my mom, grandmothera, aunts and friends.  I have a bunch of different recipes that I use throughout the fall and winter.  Of course,with me, it is hard to tell what they ate, once decorated.  These are for Halloween, so I used pumpkin, ghost and  bat cookie cutters.  I tweaked a and doubled a recipe from Nestle. As you can see, my decorating skills are not good, but the cookies are!  Remember to use mini chocolate chips or else it will be impossible to cut out the cookies!

Ingredients – 1 cup butter (softened), 1 cup shortening, 1 cup brown sugar (firmly packed),2/3 cup sugar, 4 tsp vanilla, 2 egg yolks, 4 tbs water,   1tsp salt, 4 cups flour (scooped from flour container into measuring cup), 1 12 oz bag mini chocolate chips.

Directions – preheat oven to 350.  cream butter, shortening, sugar, brown sugar and salt.  Add egg yolks and water.   Stir in flour.  Fold in chips.  On surface that has been dusted with flour, roll out dough as thick as you want your cookies to be.  Cut our your cookies with cookie cutters.  Place on a cookie sheet lined with nonstick baking liners.  Bake 10 minutes.  Cool completely. Frost as desired. Store in covered container.

I ran out of orange frosting,so I made a small amount of blue frosting for the Yankees!