To Houston TX and Tiffany, by ny ISO Italian bakery leaf cookies:

Oh, how I miss these from NY! There are NO Italian bakeries here. I recently bought a cookbook entitled Sweet Maria's Italian Cookie Tray by Maria Bruschino Sanchez, that has recipes from her family bakery.

This is the basic Italian soft butter cookie recipe that is used for both the leaf cookies and other shapes like the stars with candied cherries in the center.

Butter Cookies
Yields 40 cookies

1/2 pound butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
glace cherry halves, optional

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. In an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until really fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well until blended.
3. With mixer on low speed, add flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix just until blended. Overmixing the dough will make it tough to squeeze through a pastry bag.
4. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a large open star tip with the cookie dough. Pipe cookies onto parchment-lined cookie sheet, spacing them 2 inches apart. If desired, place a cherry half in the center of each cookie before baking.
5. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, or until edges begin to brown.
6. Using a metal spatula, lift cookies off cookie sheet and onto wire cooling racks. Cool. Store in an airtight container.

My note: For pink or green leaf cookies, tint the dough with a drop or two of red or green food coloring, and use a leaf tip to pipe the shapes. You can then dip the tips of the cookies into melted chocolate and let set on a wire rack.

Susan, Hawaii