About MarkMcB

MarkMcB is also known as Mark McBride. Originally from Wills Point, TX, a small town east of Dallas, Mark now lives in San Francisco, CA. Mark graduated from West Point with a degree in computer science. He later spent 5 years as an Army officer with a 2003 tour in Iraq leading a communications unit. Mark now develops technical solutions for biopharmaceutical supply chain operations in South San Francisco, the home of the biotech industry.  In his free time, he enjoys writing about pages about himself in the 3rd person.

Mark currently plays an active role on the following projects:

  • Athlo, a social networking site for athletes. Mark is the chief engineer for this Ruby on Rails project.
  • OmniNerd, a blog site for nerds. Mark co-founded the site and wrote the PHP code for it. Later, he converted it to Ruby on Rails and handed it off to another team of developers who maintain the site today.
  • Sweet Virginia’s, a coffee and toffee sales site. Check it out if you like sweets. You won’t be disappointed!

How to Contact MarkMcB

  • Comments - if you’ve got a question about something I’ve written, please contact me via the comments on the site.
  • Email - my email is “mark” at this site’s domain.

Recipe for Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

Cookies:
3 cups flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup soft butter
1 egg, slightly beaten
3 tbsp cream
1 tsp vanilla (can substitute almond extract)

Icing
1/3 cup Crisco (transfat-free) or a 1/3 cup of softened butter
1 pound of confectioners sugar
About 1/4 cup of milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla

Method

1 Sift dry ingredients, cut in butter and add other ingredients. Blend thoroughly; chill for several hours.

2 Break off a piece of dough the size of an orange and pat it flat in your hand. Using a rolling pin, roll on dough on floured board (best to use a 2/1 ration of flour/sugar - 4 Tbsp flour mixed with 2 Tbsp sugar) or between wax paper. (It helps if you flour both sides of the dought.) Roll out to about a 1/4 inch thickness. Cut out and put on silpat-lined or ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 5-8 minutes at 400 F. Remove the cookies from the oven as soon as you see them turning color at the base of the cookie. Let cool completely.

3 Mix icing ingredients together until smooth. Separate into different bowls, add food coloring to achieve various colors. Spread on cookies with a butter knife, use cake decorating piping equipment to add decorative accents. If you want the sprinkle type decorating candies to stick, brush the cookie with clear Karo syrup and then sprinkle.

Makes 5 dozen cookies.