Ok so I've tried making sugar cookies a few times and its always been an disaster so I strictly stick to cakes/cupcakes and cake pops for clients.  But a client insisted on getting them through me as birthday party favor and figured it's worth a try. 

I followed the following recipe and it call to chill the dough for 8 hours in the fridge...well things didnt go as planned and I couldnt get to the cookies until now (almost 24 hours later).  Is the dough a write off? I took it our of the fridge and its hard almost as a rock. I'm *praying leaving it in room temp will make the dough soft enough to roll it out and use the cutter on it?  The cookies arent due till the weekend and this was suppose to be my trial run but really want to know what I should do now?? More importantly do the dough become bad after a certain hour? 

Not at all.  I have refigerated cookie dough for days, and frozen it even longer.  Just let it warm up a little until it is workable.  Refrigerate or freeze for a while after cutting out before baking to help them keep their shape better.  HTH

When my kids were at home I made up a huge batch of choc chip cookie dough on a Sunday night, rollled it in foil and sliced the biccies off in the morning to bake before they went out to school, work, whatever (after they'd eaten their breakfast of course...I'm strict that way)

of course it wouldn't work if you had to use a cutter but made perfect gooey spreadable rounds, Lasted till the Friday morning.

Thanks for the response! I'm letting come to room temp so I can roll it out and give it a try. Excited! :D

A few quick questions:

Would baking it on a 16" round cake pan with parchment paper be OK? I dont have a cookie baking sheet (yet). 

Also for the next batch what if I roll out the dough and THEN let it rest in the fridge for 8 hours (covered ofcourse)...thinking that might be easier to roll and wont have to wait for the dough to come to room temp to roll it out?

You worry too much! Refrigerated dough keeps a couple of weeks (at least). Just make sure the dough is wrapped well. Remove from fridge a few minutes before rolling. Practice, practice, practice. You may learn to enjoy making cookies! 

Afwiw -- sometimes i roll out my cookie dough* before i chill/freeze it so all i have to do is let it warm up enough to cut out then remove the excess and bake --

*between two sheets of parchment

just a thought for future cookie making

You ladies are AWESOME! Cookies were just baked and they turned out perfect..a bit of a crisp on the outside and soft in the inside. All trial cookies have already been eaten/saved for school snack by the little ones :D

Now I have another question. I'm making the number 1 cookies which are approx 3" tall.  I initially thought it would be larger but was not able to find any cutter larger than this size. What is a reasonable price for them? They would be covered in royal icing in 1 color, wrapped in a cello bag with a custom printed tag on it.  Just dont want to under sell or over sell. When the client placed the order I didnt mention any specific size, just gave her a discounted price of $1.75 as she's ordering cake, cupcakes etc. Thinking if I should add 2 cookies in each or is 1 fine? I guess Im just not sure what the average sizes of the cookies I see others selling is?

Wrapped up something like these:

i just bought some beautiful and delicious cookies from an adorable local shop -- she's right at $3 each and cookies were about 3"  they were just boxed not individually wrapped -- she charges an additional 50 cents for individual packaging --

http://www.whimsycookieco.com/pricing/

one cookie in each bag

i don't usually make iced cookies  and for the exact reasons you are facing-- i thin the cookie dough with milk or water and pipe on most decor then bake it on -- i usually use a nicely spiced cream cheese cookie for my cut out cookies so they're not dependent on the icing to boost the flavor -- i don't want my cookies drying out while i diddle around with icings that need to dry -- 

if i do use 'icing' i use melted white chocolate but i am surely in the minority -- 

and i heartily agree that you did not over charge -- i think you undercharged by about 50%  

I usually store my decorated sugar cookies in a single layer, in a large sheet cake box, with the lid loosely closed. They dry just fine since air can still circulate. By morning I'm able to stack them on top of each other with out any denting in the icing.  Also, I've never had my cookies get dried out from leaving them out over night. I just store my cookies in a box to protect them. 

Hope this helped :)

-Ashley

The easiest way that I've found to dry and stack a ton of iced decorated cookies is to use these 'Fast Food Trays'.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BBHDCH4/?tag=cakecentral-20+service+trays

They are lightweight, basically unbreakable, really easy to clean up, and if you just jog them sideways, so you criss cross them when you stack them,  they will stack up well and give you great air circulation.  you can drape a piece of wax paper on the top layer to keep dust off and leave them to dry until you can package them.  This is also great for drying a ton of fondant decorations.