Melt in Your Mouth Sugar Cookies

I was at a 4th of July parade & a woman running for office handed out
recipes. This was one of them. They are my husband's favorite - I'll
tell
you my secret at the end of the recipe. The parade was in Pleasant
Hill, IL.
If you're not familiar with the geography of our state, imagine the
state of
IL as an expectant woman facing west. Pleasant Hill is in Pike Co.
which
would be the woman's belly button.

Ingredients:

1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. oil*
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. powdered sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 c. flour

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cream butter, oil and sugars. Add egg and
vanilla. Sift together dry ingredients and add them slowly to the
creamed
mixture. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
Flatten with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar. Bake 8-10 minutes
or
until golden brown. Remove from cookie sheet and cool completely on
racks.

*The secret to an outstandingly tender cookie with this recipe is to
use
olive oil. I found this out when I ran out of vegetable oil.

This is a wonderfully versatile recipe. Aside from being easy to
remember.
You can make cookies any size and they turn out well. You can play
around
with the flavorings (Fiori di Sicilia is wonderful, so is butternut,
butter
pecan, etc.) You can dredge the cookie in sugar and then flatten to
save a
little time. You can top with vanilla sugar or rum sugar. I love
making huge
cookies (with those big cookie scoops Wal-Mart carries.) They can be
wrapped
and given as greatly appreciated gifts. My newest adventure was
yesterday
morning. I made the big cookies (approx. 5-6 inches in diameter - this
recipe will make nine or ten cookies that size) and before baking,
took big
chunks of sugar my husband brought back from a mission trip to India -
they
are approx. 3-5 mm in size, colored them blue and sprinkled them on
the
cookies before baking. Made a cookie to rival any found in
professional
bakeries, especially if you use parchment paper on the cookie sheets
so the
cookies slide right off without marring the symmetry of the cookies.

Submitted by: Joy Zbinden of Illinois