New favorite sugar cookie recipe!

My mom & sisters & I got together to decorate sugar cookies last week; we used a recipe that my mom had gotten from her friend and it's just fantastic! Makes a nice, tender dough and doesn't need chilling before rolling out. One batch will make at least 2 dozen cookies.


Ingredients:

1 c sugar
1/2 c sour cream
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c butter (softened)
3 1/4 c flour (plus more on hand for rolling out dough)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar


Preheat oven to 350. Cream together first five ingredients. Sift flour with salt, soda, & cream of tartar in a separate bowl; then add gradually to the wet ingredients. Mix thoroughly.

Flour a flat surface and flour your rolling pin; have extra flour on hand. Using 1/4 to 1/2 the dough at a time, knead a few times with flour until it is less sticky and easier to work with. Then roll it, with plenty of flour, out to about 1/4" thickness and cut with cookie cutters.

Bake at 350 for 5-10 minutes. I found that my cookies were done at about 8 minutes; your oven may be different. Cookies will be soft and tender; delicious! But even better with frosting :)

Sour Cream Sugar Cookies

For a project last week I wanted a sugar cookie that would be fluffy and more cake-like, compared with my tried-and-true sugar cookie recipe (which I just looked up to link to, and what do you know I've never posted it here! I'll have to do that sometime). I tried this recipe, found at allrecipes.com, because it called for so much more sour cream than the other sour cream sugar cookie recipes listed. They are quite tasty and I will make them again. The dough is not too sweet, so they do need to be frosted.

5 c all-purpose flour

1 T baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 c shortening

2 c white sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 c sour cream (full-fat is best)

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside. In a large bowl, cream together the shortening and sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in vanilla and sour cream. Gradually mix in the sifted flour mixture until just blended. Cover or wrap dough and chill overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease cookie sheets. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to 1/4" thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 1/2" apart onto cookie sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes until edges just begin to brown. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Makes about 5 dozen.

A few notes:

This dough extremely sticky. When I rolled out my first batch I needed a lot of flour and then the cookies still stuck to the counter. So, I figured out a little trick that worked with the rest of the batches: dump about 1/4 c of flour on the counter and a big hunk of dough (maybe enough to cut 20 or so cookies from). Flour your hands, and knead the dough on the counter with the flour... once it has taken on enough flour so that you can work with it, then roll it out and proceed. Much easier!

This dough is very tender and fluffy and delicious... I had a hard time not eating pieces off the extra dough in the fridge...

This afternoon I baked my remaining dough into hearts, and Lucy (age 7) helped me decorate them. I didn't feel like whipping up a batch of buttercream for only about 20-25 cookies, so I scoured the pantry for what was on hand. We had a little bit of red and white Wilton bottled frosting leftover from birthdays' past, but not enough to do all the cookies. I thought to myself, "What is frosting made of? Mostly sugar, and butter." So... I had some marshmallow creme that I didn't need for anything else... and I mixed about half a stick of softened butter with a 7 oz jar of marshmallow cream. I swirled some of the red Wilton frosting into it to make the fancy swirly effect you see in the picture. Lucy was liberal with the red sprinkles on some of them. The flavor of the marshmallow/butter frosting is pretty good, but it's sticky and runny and was pretty hard to work with. It was a fun experiment though, and if taste is all that matters then I would call it a success.

Orange Strawberry Scones

Easy and delicious! And, fancy-looking too. These would also be cute cut into different shapes, like hearts for Valentine's Day.

2 c flour, plus more for dusting
1/2 c sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 T orange zest
1/2 tsp salt
6 T butter, cut into 1/2" pieces
3/4 c heavy cream or half and half
1/3 c strawberry jam

Glaze:
1/4 orange juice
2 c powdered sugar


Preheat oven to 375. In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, orange zest, and salt. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. (You can also do this with a food processor.) Stir in cream until just barely combined.

Flour a smooth work surface and roll out the dough to 1/2" thick. Cut out scones with a biscuit cutter or cookie cutter and put on a Silpat baking mat or parchment paper. Using the back of a small measuring spoon, make a shallow indentation in the center of each scone; then fill with jam.

Bake at 375 for 18-20 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine orange juice and powdered sugar for the glaze. Drizzle over each scone and let set for about 30 minutes before serving.

Chocolate Chip Cookies (the best?)

I follow several cooking blogs and I like to read cookbooks for fun, and occasionally I'll come across a recipe that claims to be THE BEST chocolate chip cookies. Well, although I always like my own version the best, I am always willing to try the others. And while every chocolate chip cookie recipe I have tried is certainly GOOD, I still always come back to my own recipe as my favorite. Differences in oven, baking sheets, method, quality of ingredients, etc. affect the outcome of anything you bake; I'll give you my recipe here and a few tips for how I like to make them. I won't claim that they're "the best" since that is obviously subjective, but they're MY favorite :)

1 c shortening
1/2 butter (one stick), slightly softened
1 1/2 c white sugar
1 1/2 c brown sugar
4 eggs
1 T vanilla
5 1/2 c all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
chocolate chips... about 2 cups or 12 oz


This is a double-batch; it makes about 5 dozen cookies for the size I make them. I use a stand mixer, which isn't absolutely necessary but does make it easier!

Cream together shortening and butter. Add both sugars, and mix for a while until well-combined and light and fluffy. Add the eggs, keep mixing for while until light and fluffy. Beating the heck out of these first few ingredients makes for a better chocolate chip cookie! Then add the vanilla.

Lots of recipes will tell you to mix the salt & baking soda with the flour separately. I don't think this is necessary. If there's any chance that your dry ingredients have lumps in them, sift them first. But almost always I just put my first cup of flour into the mixer, put the salt & baking soda on top of that, and mix it well. Then add the rest of the flour. Mix until just combined (no need to mix it to death) and then add the chocolate chips.

I like to refrigerate the dough for a while before baking; I think they turn out better that way but if you need to bake some right away that's okay too. I prefer nice aluminum half-sheet pans with a Silpat mat when baking cookies. They bake nice and evenly, not too done on the bottom; plus you have the non-stick benefit of the Silpat. Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes.

If you store all the dough in the fridge, it fits pretty well into a 2 qt/half gallon container. If you don't eat too much of the cookie dough on its own, of course! Oh, a quick note about fats. I like to use a combination of shortening and butter: butter for its flavor, and shortening because cookies usually turn out more fluffy with all or part shortening. If you use all butter the flavor is fabulous but they'll often spread out too much when cooking. I'll shift the ratio with these if I'm almost out of shortening or something, but stick with 1 1/2 cups total fat and they should turn out okay.

Enjoy!

Mock Black n' Whites

Do you know about the ease and convenience of cake mix cookies? I guess since I'm such a "from scratch" girl it took me a while to figure this out. But the possibilities are endless, and today I came up with these little cuties. It's pretty standard that you can take any regular box of cake mix, add two eggs and 1/2 c oil, and you have instant "cookie dough." From there you can mix anything with it, like nuts chocolate chips. Or, don't mix anything in, but use two colors like this! They were a big hit with my kids, my church choir, and our dinner guests.


1 box white cake mix
1 box devil's food cake mix
4 eggs
1 c vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 375. You'll need two medium-sized mixing bowls. Empty the white cake mix into one bowl; add two eggs, 1/2 c oil, and mix well with a spoon. In the other bowl, empty the devil's food (chocolate) cake mix, then add 2 eggs and 1/2 c oil and mix well with a spoon.

There are two schools of thought for the scooping of the dough. You could use two separate teaspoons so that none of the dough mixes together, or if you're not preparing these for a fussy crowd you can just use the same spoon (which is what I did). In fact, I just scooped a little chocolate dough, and then a little white dough right with it, then with my other hand took the double-dough-ball off the spoon and onto my cookie sheet lined with Silpat (since that's the only thing I bake cookies on). I didn't do any fancy forming; just plopped the dough down so that an equal amount of each color was showing, and the cookies turned out nice and circular and lovely. A couple of them were more marbled-looking, which would be very easy to do; just smush a little bit of the two colors of dough together.

Anyway, bake them at 375 for about 9 minutes. I got about 5 dozen black n' white cookies out of the 2 cake mixes.


I just thought of a fun idea; you could make rainbow colored cookies by making a batch of white cake mix cookie dough and coloring small portions of it different colors. The cookies could be solid colors or any combinations. How fun would that be! I'll have to do that for my kids sometime for a fun surprise.

Double-batch of Sara's oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

I took my Grandma B's yummy oatmeal choc. chip recipe and changed it a little ~ and since I always make a double-batch, this is how I have the ingredients written down. Makes about 7 dozen.


1 1/2 c shortening
2 c brown sugar
1 c white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 c milk
2 tsp vanilla
3 1/2 c flour
2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
5 c quick oats (blend in blender for a finer texture)
5 good shakes cinnamon
4 shakes nutmeg
1 good shake allspice
chocolate chips
nuts (optional)

Blend shortening and sugars together well. This is one of the secrets of good cookies; mixing the fats & sugars together well from the start! Add eggs and mix well. Mix in milk and vanilla.

Now for the dry ingredients. You know how so many recipes tell you to mix the dries separately in a bowl? I have never found that to be necessary unless your flour really needs sifting. For this and similar recipes, I first put in one cup of flour and then put the salt, baking soda, & spices in with it. Then once they're all blended in I add the remaining flour. Then, add the oats. Whether or not you blend the oats depends on how "oaty" you want the cookies to turn out. If your kids don't like oatmeal cookies, they'll never realize it if you blend them - putting them in the blender turns them almost into oat flour. Finally add the chocolate chips - I didn't put a quantity since everyone's opinion is different on how many is the perfect amount, but I always use semi-sweet.

Form into small balls using a cereal spoon. Bake at 375 for about 9 minutes, or until edges are done and middle still looks a little wet - leave on cookie sheet to cool and the middle will firm up.

More tips: If you're going to put the oats in the blender, measure the quantity first before blending. I let the dough sit for a little while before making the first batch, so the oats have a chance to soak up the liquid in the dough. After forming the balls of dough, I smash them down with the palm of my hand since they don't spread out much when baking. Make sure the oven is completely heated before putting in the first batch. These are so yummy frozen too - especially if they're a little bit undercooked.