Another reason for not doing sugar cookies or cut-out cookies was that - as another poster said - the flavor always seems blah. As kids, we used to lick of the sugar frosting and then try to ditch the hard, flavorless cookies. Last time I made cut-out cookies, I used a combination of orange and cream flavorings instead of vanilla or almond. (Not sure you can get cream flavor in the US; it's in every grocery store in Poland, where I live, though.) The flavor was like an orange creamcicle, if you have those where you are. Very nice. I was just making pastel, frosted cookies for spring, so the pale pink was flavored with raspberry (I stirred raspberry juice into the icing for color and flavor - very delicate), I made a pale tan colored and flavored with espresso powdered 'melted' in a few drops of vanilla, and pale orange (with squeezed-out finely grated orange zest for the color and flavor: food coloring isn't used over here except those tablets for Easter eggs). I was surprised how delighted my colleagues were with these 'plain' cookies, especially after such exotic treats as maple-walnut cookies and cranberry-white chocolate-walnut cookies, ginger creams and snickerdoodles. Nel, our Fiori di Sicilia flavor is orange and vanilla, and gives that same Creamsicle effect - YUM! PJH

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