• Preheat oven to 350°F. To prep for rolling, lay a piece of parchment on the counter and sprinkle with about 1 teaspoon of flour.
• In a large bowl, cream together unsalted butter (1½ cups; i.e. 3 sticks) and granulated sugar (1½ cups) on medium speed for 20-30 seconds.
• While mixer is still on medium speed, add in eggs (2 large), vanilla extract (1 tablespoon) and almond extract (1 teaspoon).
• Once mixed, add in baking powder (2 teaspoons), salt (2 teaspoon), and all-purpose flour (4 - 4½ cups), ½ cup at a time, on low speed.
• Once mixture is combined and all the flour disappears, transfer dough to the piece of floured parchment paper. Press mixture into large ball so that it is all incorporated and any loose floury pieces are pressed in. Knead dough for 5-10 seconds until it becomes a smooth ball, then press into 2" thick disc.

  Use a rolling pin to roll dough ⅜" to ½" thick.
• Use a snowflake cookie cutter and circle cookie cutter to cut out cookies. Transfer to a parchment baking sheet. After cutting out the cookies, carefully pull away the excess dough and use an offset spatula to help lift the cut cookies up and onto the parchment-lined baking sheet.
• Bake at 350°F for 8-10 minutes. Do not overbake. Depending on size, cookies may look underdone at 10 minutes, but I recommend removing them from the oven before seeing any brown on the edges. If you've used a medium/large cutter and made them ½" thick, you may need to bake for a few extra minutes.
• Once baked, remove from oven and place pan on a cooling rack. Do not remove cookies from hot pan. Let them rest on the hot pan for 10-15 minutes to finish baking before removing from the pan. Let cool completely before frosting.

Decorate Cookies

• For round sugar cookies: fill a piping bag with the blue buttercream with a #5 round piping tip. Pipe blue lines exactly like this, then sprinkle with white sparkling sugar.
• Snowflake-shaped cookies: make a blue glaze and dip sugar cookies. Set on cooling rack. Then, make additional white icing using powdered sugar (2 cups), vanilla extract (1 teaspoon) and milk (4 tablespoons). While the blue layer is still wet, use a #2 piping tip to draw interior snowflake lines.