Sugar Cookies
Dec. 17th, 2010 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynOne of the little shops near Baby Bank's downtown location sold really good fresh-baked iced sugar cookies. Everyone at the bank loved them. They started me on a months-long quest for a sugar cookie recipe that made cookies like them. Eventually, I discovered that the secret ingrediant was cream cheese. For years, I've been baking these cookies and snickerdoodles at Christmas time and mailing them to a handful of long-distance friends and family. I found the original recipe via Google from some website or other, but I've long since forgotten where. My copy of it is in almost illegible pencil on the back of an orange punch card. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
haikujaguar asked me on Twitter for it, and I could kind of use a more durable copy, so I'm typing it up here.
Evanescent Sugar Cookies
1 c. sugar
1 c. butter
3.5* oz cream cheese
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg yolk
2 c. flour
* 1 ounce of cream cheese = 1 tablespoon. Anywhere from 3 to 4 ounces works fine; the cookies come out a bit denser and softer with more.
Preheat oven to 375.
Beat together everything but the flour. Mix in the flour.
If you love rolling out sugar cookies and cutting them into cute shapes for decorating, wrap the dough in plastic and put it in the refrigerator for 8+ hours. Then roll it out on a floured surface and cut with a floured cookie cutter. You will probably need to use a lot of extra flour; this is not a very good dough for making shaped cookies.
If you do not love cutting sugar cookies, and I do not, you can skip the "chill dough" stage and just make little balls of dough with your hands that you flatten with your palm against a cookie sheet. Flatten to about cookie-height -- a quarter inch or so is good. Leave a little space between cookies on the sheet , but you don't need to leave much -- the cookies only spread a little.
Bake for about 8 minutes. This is the crucial part! How long you bake them determines their texture -- longer and they'll be dry and crispy, less and they'll be gooey, just right and they'll be melt-in-your-mouth creamy. Exactly how long you want to bake them depends on how you like them and your oven, so you may want to experiment with small batches. I recommend no less than 6 minutes and no more than 11. If you use an airbake cookie sheet, they will not brown (unless you overbake them). On a regular cookie sheet, the bottoms may brown a bit.
Let cool couple of minutes on the cookie sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool the rest of the way. (This is not terribly crucial but seems to improve the texture a bit).
Top with your favorite icing or eat plain. I always ice them with whatever random icing recipe Google can find for me that I happen to have all the ingrediants for handy. Or I make some concotion using butter+cream+powdered sugar+vanilla. I've never actually found an icing recipe I really like, so I have no loyalty to one. Maybe someday.
...
Now I feel like there's no point in me baking these to mail any more, since everyone will know my secret now ... c.c
haikujaguar asked me on Twitter for it, and I could kind of use a more durable copy, so I'm typing it up here.Evanescent Sugar Cookies
1 c. sugar
1 c. butter
3.5* oz cream cheese
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg yolk
2 c. flour
* 1 ounce of cream cheese = 1 tablespoon. Anywhere from 3 to 4 ounces works fine; the cookies come out a bit denser and softer with more.
Preheat oven to 375.
Beat together everything but the flour. Mix in the flour.
If you love rolling out sugar cookies and cutting them into cute shapes for decorating, wrap the dough in plastic and put it in the refrigerator for 8+ hours. Then roll it out on a floured surface and cut with a floured cookie cutter. You will probably need to use a lot of extra flour; this is not a very good dough for making shaped cookies.
If you do not love cutting sugar cookies, and I do not, you can skip the "chill dough" stage and just make little balls of dough with your hands that you flatten with your palm against a cookie sheet. Flatten to about cookie-height -- a quarter inch or so is good. Leave a little space between cookies on the sheet , but you don't need to leave much -- the cookies only spread a little.
Bake for about 8 minutes. This is the crucial part! How long you bake them determines their texture -- longer and they'll be dry and crispy, less and they'll be gooey, just right and they'll be melt-in-your-mouth creamy. Exactly how long you want to bake them depends on how you like them and your oven, so you may want to experiment with small batches. I recommend no less than 6 minutes and no more than 11. If you use an airbake cookie sheet, they will not brown (unless you overbake them). On a regular cookie sheet, the bottoms may brown a bit.
Let cool couple of minutes on the cookie sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool the rest of the way. (This is not terribly crucial but seems to improve the texture a bit).
Top with your favorite icing or eat plain. I always ice them with whatever random icing recipe Google can find for me that I happen to have all the ingrediants for handy. Or I make some concotion using butter+cream+powdered sugar+vanilla. I've never actually found an icing recipe I really like, so I have no loyalty to one. Maybe someday.
...
Now I feel like there's no point in me baking these to mail any more, since everyone will know my secret now ... c.c
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 02:09 pm (UTC)Thank you for typing this up for me! It looks intriguing. I'm going to copy it down and try it if I need more cookies this year. I made Frankenstein sugar cookies yesterday... I ran out of white sugar and had to use half brown, and couldn't find any vanilla so used Frangelico. So I had... hazelnut liqueur/brown sugar sugar cookies. With too many sprinkles because I turned my back and when I turned around again, my daughter had pried the top off the sprinkle bottle and delightedly dumped the entire contents onto the cookies and pressed down. >.>
no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 04:43 pm (UTC)(In fact, she used to include brownies with my batch of sugar cookies...and I'd always ignore them! And you know how much I like chocolate.)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-19 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 06:10 pm (UTC)Did you once again underestimate the lack of actual cooking supplies in your mother's home? :D
I have two different bottles of vanilla extract now, because I decided to see if fancy expensive vanilla extract would make better-tasting baked goods before I ran out of the giant bottle I got from Costco a few years back. I'm not sure if the giant bottle has actually managed to go bad, in fact. I have had it for a long time. c.c
So how do the Franken-cookies taste?
no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 07:34 pm (UTC)I gave up buying vanilla extract. I've made my own since August of 09 or so, I think it is. So much cheaper..!
The franken-cookies are okay. They taste like Christmas sugar cookies, which I don't like much, but, you know, tradition. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 08:28 pm (UTC)I've been using the same bottle for over a year now. Every time I use some, I just top it back up again. It's so cheap and so easy and the results taste so much better. >.>
no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 08:34 pm (UTC)There was one amusing moment, and for a few seconds it seemed that I had found a Rowyn-cookie that I didn't actually care for.
The coating was delicious, of course, but the inside ... turned out to be a packing peanut (Styrofoam) that can been dusted with sugar-cookie crumbs. A couple of other packing peanuts had made it into the cookie stack as I too-quickly unwrapped them -- I took a picture and sent it to her, along with a nearly identical real cookie.
It was the best Styrofoam I'd ever eaten.
===|==============/ Level Head
no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-19 03:07 am (UTC)===|==============/ Level Head
no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 04:49 pm (UTC)Ack! No cookies from you this year?!?
*sad kytty eyes*
no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-19 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-24 02:19 am (UTC)This recipe always says
It's good to know how to make them, but it's getting the package in the mail, and rationing how many I can eat and still leave R. and B. enough, that makes it fun. So there's no obligation, but there's certainly a point. I can't put your energy into them!
Thank you, and a very happy holiday!
no subject
Date: 2010-12-24 02:21 am (UTC)Happy holidays to you too!
no subject
Date: 2010-12-24 04:47 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2010-12-24 11:59 pm (UTC)