Instructions: Stir together flour, baking powder and salt.

Beat butter and shortening for 30 seconds; add sugar and beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat well.

Add dry ingredients to beaten mixture, beating until well combined. Cover and chill at least 3 hours.

Working with 1/2 of dough at a time, on a lightly floured surface roll to 1/8 -inch thickness. Cut into desired cookie shapes with cutters. Place on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake in preheated 375-degree oven for 8 minutes or until done. Decorate as desired. 3 dozen.JM.

For sugar cookies, its not the cookie itself that speaks to the eater, but the shape its in. Check out your collection of cookie cutters because they tell a story and document history as much as any tools of the trade.

The light, sweet dough, rolled flat, becomes a canvas. When I was a kid, holiday sugar cookies were baked in the shape of Santas or dogs or stars or other simple motifs. The decorations were simple, too: raisins, red hots, flaked coconut (a must for Santas beard). Sometimes, an icing base, sometimes not.

I pulled open the kitchen drawer recently and there were the old standards - that roly-poly guy, the dogs, the turkey and gingerbread boys, dating back to the 40s and 50s - supplemented by a whole set of dinosaur shapes - a case of another generation of cookie-eaters responding to different cutouts. The cookie legend continues. Linda Susan Dudley, food columnist.

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