Cream sugar, butter, and shortening together very well. Beat in eggs, one at a time; then add milk. Stir together flour and baking powder; add in two parts, mixing well. Add vanilla.

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and chill for two hours. Then preheat oven to 350.

On floured board (or countertop), roll small portion of dough to 1/4 thickness. (Keep rest of dough covered, and if it starts to get soft, put back in fridge to firm it up.) Dip cutters in flour and cut out dough. Lift carefully and gently with spatula to parchment paper-lined cookie sheet; these cookies are tender and delicate and will tear. If they do tear just sprinkle a little water on the torn spots and press a 'patch' of dough over them. They'll be good as new!

Place cookies on cookie sheet, about 1/2 inch apart is as close as you ought to do it, because they will spread a tad bit.

Bake 10-15 minutes, keeping a close eye at first until you know what they're supposed to look like when done--which is golden pale brown. Also they will smell done. You'll know! Y'all bake cookies, y'all will know when they're done! Take 'em out and cool 'em on the cookie sheet about five minutes. Then take 'em off and lay 'em carefully on the wire rack (which is UNDER the cookie sheet, of course!) to finish coolin'.

Now put the icin' together:

Put all the ingredients above, in the Icin' section, in large mixer bowl, except the milk. (I use my KitchenAid for both Teacakes AND icing, so I have to wash out the bowl between bakin' and icin'. One of these days, I'm a gonna get me another KA bowl! bliss!)

Add milk gradually and mix at slow speed until it's of the right consistency to spread and/or drip on cookies. First you need to spread the base coat, and then after that you'll find you most likely will have to add some more milk to the different colors.

Take several bowls or deep teacups and divide the icin' among 'em. Be SURE to leave a good deal more white icin' in the mixer bowl; sad experience has taught me to do this, as when you run out of a particular color and you didn't leave more white icin', it's just toooo bad for YOU, honey chile!

Take your food color paste (like Wilton's, that is what I use) and take a toothpick and dip it in the color jar, and mix up a little color paste at a time to see how it's gonna look and if it needs more, you can put it in.

Then if you want to emphasize the lines, you can sprinkle colored sugar of the same color as the lines or what-have-you, ONTO the lines...it looks really snazzy, I must say! Or you can do a plaid design on, say a star...yellow and blue look really nifty there. And before the designs dry, you can put the things like nonpareils or chocolate chips or red hots on the cookies, placin' 'em where you want 'em.