This was the second recipe I tried. The first one tasted pretty good, but they just didn't look right. Thus, I went back to an old standby from the "King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion" book. It's a great cookbook with no photos and lots of great recipes. 

This is one of them. The dough comes out wonderfully smooth, and it rolls out like, well, like a decorator's dream. 

1 cup butter

2 cups powdered sugar

2 tablespoons light corn syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon salt

1 large egg beaten with 2 tablespoons water

3½ cups flour

Cream the butter, sugar and corn syrup until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla and salt. Add the egg/water mixture and beat until smooth. Divide the dough in half. Place each half in a plastic bag, and flatten slightly. Refrigerate for an hour. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

On a lightly floured countertop, roll out one of the balls of dough to a thickness of about ¼ to 1/8-inch. Cut out the dough with a 3-inch cookie cutter. Transfer the cookies to an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake the cookies until they are lightly browned around the edges, 10 to 12 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack. Repeat with the remaining dough. 

When the cookies are completely cool, you can start frosting them. 

This recipe made about 34 cookies when I made them. You'll get more or less depending on how thick you roll out the dough...