Slainte!

It's the week of St. Patrick's Day, and I have decided to theme all of my posts from today until the 17th about St. Paddy's. If you were unaware, "slainte" is said in Ireland as we say cheers. It literally means health. I love it, my boyfriend is very, very Irish, and is the first person to make me aware of this word and its usage and everything, so I decided to try and be authentic this year. The first recipe I made wasn't authentic but I used authentic phrases! Well....mostly authentic phrases. I made some sugar cookies with the words "slainte," "Graim Thu" (I love you), "Kiss me I'm Irish," "Erin Go Bragh," and "Happy St. Patrick's Day."

I made these sugar cookies earlier this week with the help of my brand new, super cute cookie cutters from Williams Sonoma. They are called Message-in-a-cookie Cutters and although they are kind of difficult to use, I think they are totally worth it. They allow you to make your own phrases to put into the cookies, and they turn out really well. The hard part is getting the little tiles into the cookie cutters provided. I ended up just using the cookie cutters and then pressing the little tiles in by hand because it took so long to slide them in. It didn't actually take long though, so I am still a happy camper.

Here's the sugar cookie recipe I used. The blog Fictional Foods is so fun, and since I'm a complete dork I am totally going to try basically all of them. I am going to make these cookies again for the Hunger Games since that's what she made them for, but I decided, since St. Patrick's Day is sooner than the HG premier, I'd try them out for this first.

Sweethearts

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 large egg

Instructions

1. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy.
2. Add vanilla extract and egg and mix thoroughly.
3. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Add to butter mixture slowly.
4. Lightly flour a piece of parchment paper and roll the dough out. Dip the cookie cutter in flour to keep it from sticking and cut your cookies, using the leftover dough to roll again.
5. Press names or messages into cookies.
6. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees until done.
7. Cool on rack and enjoy!