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1
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
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2
Sift together salt, flour, and sugar. Add in melted butter and vanilla and mix. Process in food processor if possible. Mixture will be very dry and crumbly and look like ground almond.
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3
Line metal baking pans with aluminum foil. Grease heavily. Place a 2-inch round cookie cutter onto the sheet and press tightly to the pan. Scoop about 3 tablespoons of dough mixture into the center of the cookie cutter. Press very hard. Use the flat base of a glass to press if that's possible. Compress the mixture as much as possible, as if you're making a graham cracker crust for a tiny cheesecake. Once the pressing process is done, put your right hand on the cookie and secure it while having your left hand slowly twist the cookie cutter (right handed people may do it vice versa). Then gently remove it. If the cookie collapsed, its either you didn't press hard enough, or you didn't twist it well. Repeat these steps for each cookie.
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4
Once you're done, bake the cookies in preheated oven for 27-30 mins, or until the cookies are golden brown. They could have crack on them.
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5
While baking, make the chocolate icing if you choose to decorate your cookies. Mix sugar and cocoa together in a small bowl. (if you want colorful icing, replace the cocoa with more sugar and drip a few drops of food coloring). Now stir in the milk, one tablespoon at a time. Stir well after each addition. If all three tablespoons are added and the icing is still too thick for icing, add more milk (though I think 3 tbs is enough). Transfer to a piping bag and cut a very small hole at the tip.
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6
When cookies are ready, take them out of the oven and slightly cool them for 5 minutes Using a small knife or a rubber spatula, slowly lift the cookies from the very side. If you made it right, the cookies shouldn't crumble up OR stick to the foil. It should come off easily, and the cookies are very hard and solid.
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7
Ice the cookies right away to make drying the icing easier and faster. After the icing is dried, store cookies in an airtight container. The cookies are stackable.
