Sugar Cookies

Cookie
Type: Cut-out

Thisrecipe came with some Dinosaur cookie cutters from William Sonoma. I’m sure the recipe will work if you have anelectric hand mixer as well. This makes 24 cookies depending on the size of your cookie cutters.

Ingredients

2 ½ cups flour

1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

8 tbsp unsalted butter (1 stick)

8 tbsp margarine (1 stick)

1 ¼ cups sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I now use Fiori Di Sicilia)

2 teaspoons grated lemon zest

Frosting, decorative icings and sugars

Directions:

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a flat beater, beat together the butter, margarine and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes, stopping the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well and scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add the vanilla and lemon zest and beat until just blended. Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture in three additions, beating each addition until just blended.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and shape into a ball. Divide the dough in half and shape each half into a disk. Wrap the disks separately in plastic wrap and
refrigerate for at least 1 hour or as long as overnight.

Here's mine and I've literally made THOUSANDS of these cookies over the years. It was my mother's recipe and I'm not sure if it was her mother's. I made a batch yesterday for Halloween cookies to mail to the grands.

CUT OUT COOKIES

1 c. butter

1 1/2 c. sugar

3 eggs

1 T. vanilla

1 t. almond flavoring

4 c. flour

1 t. baking powder

1/2 t. salt

Cream butter and sugar until light. Add eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla and almond flavoring. Mix flour, baking powder and salt. Add to creamed mixture. Pat into 2 discs and refrigerate at least 1 hour.

Roll on lightly floured board and cut out into desired shapes. Bake in a. preheated 375 degree oven for 8 to 10 minutes. You can frost with desired frosting, sprinkle with sugar before frosting.

A couple of rejects for tea yesterday.

Thanks Nancy! Yours is very similar to the one I use, which I got from one of my best friends but it is her mother-in-law's recipe. I was pondering the Crisco the other day at the store . . . I'm sure that was the secret to my grandmother's cooking . . . I stopped using anything other than organic soybean products when "Roundup Ready" soybeans became the norm. I use Roundup in my work and I am no fan of increasing its indiscriminate use. Organic soybean oil is expensive. I have switched to almost exclusively olive oil for cooking, don't miss the soy. But there really isn't a good organic hydrogenated fat product. I've tried some of the "organic" alternatives using palm oil or coconut oil, just not that great . . . corn oil margarine is not available near me in organic form . . .Back in the day leaf lard was another alternative, but it is quite expensive nowdays, which is odd . . . my grandma was a Seventh Day Adventist and they are vegetarians, so she didn't use much lard . . . although she used to cheat occasionally on bacon and save that grease . . .

I have used LindaC's sugar cookie recipe and none other since she shared about 15 years ago. There is no leavening in her recipe, so cut out cookies hold their shape perfectly. They taste great too! If Linda doesn't chime in, I will post it if you like.

Here's my recipe for butter cookies, which are similar to sugar cookies. Note that there is no salt in this recipe. I do not like salt in cookies. There is enough salty flavor from the baking soda.

Lars’ Danish Butter Cookies

1-1/4 cups unsalted butter, softened
1 to 1-1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 egg yolks, beaten
2-1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1-1/2 teaspoons Amaretto

Cream butter and sugar. Beat egg yolks in, one at a time. Add remaining ingredients; mix well. Chill dough. Roll dough into small balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Press dough with any press or glass dipped in sugar. Bake at 325 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes.
Remove immediately from cookie sheet and cool.

Yield: about 30 cookies

Variations:

You can substitute other flavorings for the Amaretto, such as a bit of grated lemon rind or vanilla or coconut.

I've used different recipes and keep going back to this one from Martha Stewart. You can use milk instead of brandy, but the brandy really adds a nice richness.

Sugar Cookies

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 stick butter, room temp.
1 cup sugar
1 large egg, room temp.
2 T. brandy (or milk)

1/2 tsp. vanilla (increase to 1 tsp. if using milk)

In a large bowl, sift flour, salt and baking powder; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar on medium speed until fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add flour mixture and mix on low speed until thoroughly combined.

Divide dough in half into 2 flat disks and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Chill about at least one hour. If freezing, wrap in plastic wrap then heavy-duty foil or Ziploc freezer bags. Thaw in fridge overnight.

Preheat oven to 350. Have parchment-lined baking sheets ready.

Remove dough from fridge. If it’s very hard, let it stand at room temp to soften slightly.

Dust work surface with flour. If dough still feels hard, whack it several times with your rolling pin to help soften. Roll dough to about 1/8-inch thickness (or thicker depending on your own taste), stopping often to release the dough by running an offset spatula under it. Cut into desired shapes and transfer to prepared, cool baking sheets. Dough can be re-rolled and cut once...cookies will become tough if dough is rolled too often.

Bake about 10 minutes or until edges just begin to brown, rotating halfway through baking time. Baking time can be slightly longer for thicker cookies. Cool on wire racks.

Note: I like to chill the cut cookies on the baking sheets about 10 minutes before baking. It helps to have the dough cold when it goes in the oven. Do not use insulated cookie sheets as they can encourage spreading.

The best sugar cookies I've ever had were made by a friend who attributed the recipe to Martha Stewart. This was more than 20 years ago. Now there are so many I don’t know which one. I always make real shortbread, and never get around to sugar cookies. ;(

plllog, shortbread is actually my favorite. Simple, buttery and sooooo darn good.

Thanks nekotish... Here ya go.....they are called sugar cookies for a reason!!

Sugar
cookies:

1 cup
of butter

2 cups of
sugar

Cream
together and add

2 eggs
beaten with 2 T milk and 1 teaspoon vanilla ( I like a bit more)

Mix with
the butter mix

Add 3 cups
flour mixed with 1/2 tsp salt....and as much as 1/2 cup more flour until it's stiff
enough to roll out

Make flat
patties, wrap and refrigerate for an hour or longer....

Dust board
with flour and roll and cut...

Bake 375
for 8 to 10 minutes....I use parchment on the cookie sheets....if you don't
have parchment....lightly grease the sheets.

The
absence of baking powder keeps them from rising and keeps the cookies true to
the shape of the cutter.....and makes them crisp

Obviously this was written before the advent of silpat.....which works as well or better than parchment.

Hi, everybody! I have recentrly regestered here, and there are so many interesting recipes. Wanna try all of them!

Welcome, Jessica!

Hi Jessica!

This seems like a fine place to start Jessica! Can't go wrong with cookies! Welcome to the forum!

Lovemycorgi - what icing do you use? Your cookies look wonderful.

Cocaty, thank you! It's a royal icing made with meringue powder, just thinned down enough to get a good "flooding" consistency. I'll post the recipe as soon as I can. I don't use royal icing very often, so It took me forever to frost those cookies. I had to keep emptying the piping bag back into the bowl to add more water, even though I watched numerous youtube videos on getting the right consistency. Once I had that nailed down it was a lot easier.

Cocaty, I looked through my recipe notes and saw that I used "My Favorite Royal Icing" from the Sally's Baking Addiction blog. I'd post the link, but the last time I did that my post disappeared.

I'm still looking for a better tasting icing than Royal. I've tried a crusting buttercream, but I couldn't get a smooth finish.

Today I made pumpkin cut-out sugar cookies and I'll be icing those with a powdered sugar/heavy cream glaze and finishing them with sprinkles. So much easier than piping Royal icing!!