Sorry if this is a big DUH questiion but I'm going to try my hand at making and decorating cookies. In the "No Fail Sugar Cookie" recipe do you use salted or unsalted butter or does it matter?

Salted.

Thanks!

Unsalted

Don't think it matters that much, I usually use salted just because I think it gives more flavour. I don't add the salt in the recipe too though! I use salted butter for my buttercream and it really helps cut the sweetness. HTH!

Since the recipe calls for added salt, I would either use unsalted butter and add the salt as specified in the recipe, or I would use salted butter with no additional salt added.

I always use salted...salted butter just has a better flavor to me.

and a little off subject...use the best butter you can find. Cheap butter just doesn't work right sometimes!

I should amend my previous post. I use unsalted butter because I salt my recipe. I prefer to control the amount of salt that goes in, use popcorn salt because it is a much finer grade, dilute it in the liquid portion of the icing recipe so that it melts completely and doesn't create bumps in the icing. Yes, salt improves the flavor of the icing and cuts the sweetness as well.

I use unsalted. Salted butter also has excess water in it- therefore the cookies may spread in baking.
Also, I want to control the amount of salt that is going in.

I use salted and add the salt. the salted butter is less greasy. And mine didn't spread at all. Except one batch that had been out of the fridge too long and had gotten to room temp.

I have anouther question thats a little off the subject....
I have noticed that most packages do not have a 100% butter label or anything... How do you know which is all butter, and which is not? I have been useing land-o-lakes, I think thats all butter. Theres astore in town that sells the little rounds but I dont know if they are all butter, they are like .25 apiece so I dont know....

I only use unsalted butter for my baking.

Wow okay I guess you can either one way or another. I think I will try out both and see what works best for me. Thanks for all your opinions though.

For baking, you generally use unsalted butter unless the recipe states otherwise. In older recipe books butter they used salted butter.