My Favorite Sugar Cookie Recipe

This recipe comes just in time for your holiday baking!

Oh Christmas Tree!

In the past I have written about this favorite sugar cookie recipe, one I adapted from the Food Network's own Alton Brown. Since he is a food scientist, Mr. Brown understands a recipe on an almost molecular level. I first made these cookies about 10 years ago, if not before. The recipe stands out for many reasons. It comes together quickly with just a few ingredients. It rolls beautifully, I've found, even without chilling. In fact, though the recipe calls for chilling the dough for an hour, I let it rest at room temperature and roll it out without refrigerating. Cookie cutters work like a dream, and re-rolled scraps are as tender as first-cut cookies. This recipe takes to a sprinkling of sugar or a full-on flood of royal icing. It can be as simple or as elaborate as your energy levels dictate. I use it for almost every holiday, and I even roll it into balls and make jam thumbprints. It's a cross between a sugar cookie and shortbread, with a prominent butter and vanilla flavor. It's almost as easy as buying prepared sugar cookie dough, but so much better. If I can't convince you to try this recipe, let me just say that you are missing out!

Cut-out Sugar Cookie Recipe, adapted from the Food Network and Alton Brown

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
Line cookie sheets with parchment paper (Always!!!)

Stir together:
3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Set aside.

In mixing bowl, cream:
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar

Add:
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (my addition)

Optional: add 2 tbsp. freshly grated orange or lemon zest and you won't regret it!

The original recipe calls for chilling this dough for an hour. If you don't want to do that, let it rest for a while (maybe 20 minutes) and roll out at room temperature. Also, if you don't want to roll out all the cookies in one fell swoop, you can freeze half of it to roll out another time. I freeze cookie doughs all the time. 

On a lightly floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin, roll out about 1/4 inch thick and cut with cookie cutters. Re-roll scraps. 

(IF you are not planning to frost these cookies after baking, before they go in the oven you can sprinkle with decorating sugars.)

Bake for about 9 minutes but check for a very slight browning on the bottom edge of the cookies. That's the true sign that they are ready to come out of the oven. Without that indication, they are likely underdone. 

Cool on pans for about 10 minutes and then cool completely on wire rack. When completely cooled, you can frost. 

Royal Frosting: I use this recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction blog. It's a wonderful recipe and is linked here. 

I do hope you try this recipe this holiday season. I have a feeling it will be your go-to sugar cookie recipe if you do!

Lemon Zest Cookies with White Chocolate and Toasted Coconut

Well, I'm at it again. Baking cookies, and this time they are for my friends Sue and Kim, who are both celebrating birthdays this week. We're going to meet for lunch tomorrow (today by the time this is posted), where I'll give them their gifts as well as this gift from my kitchen.

Must say, Alton Brown's sugar cookie recipe gets no rest in my kitchen! This time, I changed it up a bit. I added the zest of one small lemon to the dough. I used a 3-inch round biscuit cutter to form the cookies, and spread the cooled cookies with melted white chocolate, and sprinkled toasted coconut (yep, I'm on a kick) over that! Rather than linking to the recipe in a previous post, below you find my adapted version. It's half the original recipe (in quantity) and made about sixteen 3-inch round cookies. Actually, it made 17, but one didn't look quite right so I had to eat it. Had to. (Love the addition of lemon!)

Here's the recipe:

Lemon Zest Cookies with White Chocolate and Toasted Coconut

Oven - 375 degrees Farenheit

inspired by Alton Brown's sugar cookie recipe

1/2 cup soft butter

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

zest of one small lemon (about a tablespoon fresh zest - if using dried zest, use 1 teaspoon)

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream butter and sugar well. Scrape bowl and mix again. Beat in one egg, extracts, and lemon rind.  Beat very well. Add flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix until well combined and scrape bowl to make sure it is all incorporated. No need to chill this dough - it's ready to go as soon as it's mixed. 

Turn dough out onto floured surface. Pat dough into a round and dust top and bottom with more flour.  Roll 1/4-inch thick and cut with 3-inch (or desired size) biscuit cutter or round cookie cutter (or any shape you want). Cut out cookies. Reroll scraps and cut more cookies until all the dough has been used up.  

Place cookie rounds on cookie sheet, about an inch apart. I fit a dozen on one sheet - 3 across, 4 down. Bake for 7-9 minutes or until bottoms just begin to brown. Remove from oven and cool on wire rack.

Decorate with white chocolate and coconut:

1 cup white chocolate or white confection morsels, melted (three, 30-second intervals in the microwave did it for me).

toasted coconut (about 1/2 cup, spread on cookie sheet - 350 oven for 6-7 minutes - watch so it doesn't get too brown).

Spread about a teaspoon of melted white chocolate on one end of a cookie. Sprinkle with toasted coconut.  

Cool until white chocolate is set - a few hours, or you can speed it up in the fridge or freezer.

YUM!

Brick Cookies!

Today I delivered 40 brick sugar cookies to an office at Skidmore College (where I work). These cookies were to be given to the parents of the Class of 2013 Parents Fund, and also to the College's Board of Trustees. When I was asked if I could make cookies that looked like the bricks that the Parents Fund provides for graduating seniors, and are located in a patio on beautiful Case Green, I was sure I could. I just had no idea about how to go about it. After a little thought, I realized I could cut sugar cookie dough into rectangles, ice the baked cookies with royal frosting, and decorate them like the bricks that bear our graduates' names. I got the brick-like finish by blotting the dark grey/black icing with a paper towel onto a paper plate until it was almost dry, and then dabbing the paper towel onto the brick-colored icing that had dried overnight.

Using Alton Brown's sugar cookie recipe, my tried-and-true and absolute favorite, I added a little bit of lemon flavor, this time with extract. Sometimes grated lemon rind does the trick.  It's very versatile flavor-wise. You can't go wrong with AB's sugar cookie recipe!

Here are a few photos of Brick Cookies!:

Thanks for stopping by! Please come again!

Sweet Baby Feet

This Saturday morning was one filled with anticipation for the births of two about-to-be born babies. I was honored with the responsibility to bake cakes for two separate showers. The first cake was a black and white marble sheet cake decorated in a woodland theme, requested by a forever friend Christi (mother to five, including 2 sets of twins!) for her good friend Jaime and husband Chris. The second, also black and white marble, was a 2-tiered cake for my high school (and beyond) friend Linda's daughter who is expecting a baby boy. Linda also asked for baby feet cookies, and photos of those are posted here as well.  

I am so grateful and have to say that I couldn't have pulled any of this off without the help of my daughter Katie, who was aware of my morning's time crunch (since I was a little bit social last night, and went out to dinner with my sister Anne and nephew Patrick, and then went on to see my brother Michael's play, Lucky Stiff, at Russell Sage College in Troy, and got home much too late, and with no regrets!). 

While I'm am rambling a little bit in exhausted energy, I somehow find it important to note that I produced so many dishes today that the dishwasher ran twice!  And after the cakes and cookies were safely delivered to their respective showers, the rest of the day was spent with my buddies Henry and Peter so their parents could have a Saturday skiing date. When it came time to prepare dinner for the boys, I took the simple way out and made them peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches and orange slice "smiles." Just couldn't face creating any more dirty dishes! Anyway, because it was a late night, I set my alarm for 6 a.m. this morning to frost and decorate the cakes and I cut it very, very close!

It's been a long, long day so I am ready to go to bed the minute I post this, but am excited to share photos of today's creations so that I can sleep in tomorrow morning, maybe! And, not bake a thing!

Welcome little ones!  May every happy occasion of your lives be celebrated with cake!

Making Cookies for My Little Pumpkins

It's been a very good week here in Middle Grove, New York.  First of all, Hurricane Sandy came and went with hardly any interference in our lives, and given her devastating impact on other areas, we are indeed fortunate.  Secondly, I got to spend the weekend with my grandsons Henry and Peter (heard of 'em?  Sure you have!).  Their parents went away to the Maine coast for a kid-free weekend with their friends.  And thirdly, I get to make their Halloween special by baking cookies just for my little guys - I'm making Alton Brown's sugar cookie recipe into Jack-o-lanterns (just half a recipe).  I LOVE this recipe because it is so simple, and so very good.  The buttery dough rolls so easily into a silky sheet that just invites your cutters to make an impression.  No chilling necessary even though the recipe calls for it.  Mine rolled beautifully right out of the mixing bowl.  I used a circular cutter today, because I was too lazy to dig into my treasure-trove of a gazillion cookie cutters to find the pumpkin.  Pumpkins are round, I had a round lid at the ready, so, wah-lah!  Well, a little true confession here -- I did buy a bag of Halloween candy, of those bite-sized Butterfinger and Baby Ruth bars, but it's the night before Halloween and the candy seems to be missing...  Wonder how that happened?  So, instead of manufactured, impersonal bites of chocolately goodness, my boys are getting home-baked cookies from Grandma ("Meena" as Pete calls me), and it's kind of a happy accident, right?

H and P at B and J's!
(That's chocolate ice cream smeared on Pete's cheek!)

So, about Halloween -- we live in the middle of a sparsely populated forest here in MG, and it is more a home here and a home way over there than a typical neighborhood, so the boys will trick-or-treat tomorrow at Skidmore College where Henry goes to pre-school (and where I work in Admissions).  Pete will join him and, as Darth Vader and Yoda, the duo will go with their Mom and Henry's class office-to-office, building-to-building, in what will be their primary trick-or-treating experience.  I'll try to sneak out to run an errand at just the right time, and maybe catch my little Star Warriors as they parade around campus.  I can't wait to see them all decked out!

To top it all off, I won a raffle (I seldom win contests!) and will pick up pizza, beverages, and cupcakes for Halloween dinner at Mama Mia's in Saratoga Springs.  I was one of four lucky winners, and so was my friend Karen.  The funny thing is, we both went to MM's for lunch with our friend Liz, on different occasions, and we both won, but Liz didn't!  I'll make it up to her.  She's a winner in my book of very best friends!

Following are photos of my time with H and P this weekend, as well as pics of the cookies that I'm in the middle of making right now.  In fact, you can't see it, but I have flour all over my navy blue cardigan, since I always think of wearing an apron, but a little too late.

Happy Halloween everyone.  Maybe I'll dress up as a baker! That'd be a stretch!   I hope you capture the spirit of little goblins and have a wonderful fright night!

Click to have fun with us...
(and that's Hank and Pete's friend Lynn DiMenna in the center pic)

Cookies for my lil punkins...

ALTON BROWN'S SUGAR COOKIE RECIPE

3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon milk
Powdered sugar, for rolling out dough  (I use flour)

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. Place butter and sugar in large bowl of electric stand mixer and beat until light in color. Add egg and milk and beat to combine. Put mixer on low speed, gradually add flour, and beat until mixture pulls away from the side of the bowl. Divide the dough in half, wrap in waxed paper, and refrigerate for 2 hours. (I didn't refrigerate - used it right after mixing, and it was great.)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Sprinkle surface where you will roll out dough with powdered sugar (I used flour). Remove 1 wrapped pack of dough from refrigerator at a time, sprinkle rolling pin with powdered sugar, and roll out dough to 1/4-inch thick. Move the dough around and check underneath frequently to make sure it is not sticking. If dough has warmed during rolling, place cold cookie sheet on top for 10 minutes to chill. Cut into desired shape, place at least 1-inch apart on greased baking sheet, parchment, or silicone baking mat, and bake for 7 to 9 minutes or until cookies are just beginning to turn brown around the edges, rotating cookie sheet halfway through baking time. Let sit on baking sheet for 2 minutes after removal from oven and then move to complete cooling on wire rack. Serve as is or ice* as desired. Store in airtight container for up to 1 week.

*Use Royal Icing to ice cookies (any good recipe will do - here's one from Joy of Baking:  http://www.joyofbaking.com/RoyalIcing.html

Original recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/cda/recipe_print/0,1946,FOOD_9936_25187_RECIPE-PRINT-FULL-PAGE-FORMATTER,00.html

Pitter Patter

I don't know what you like to do on a sizzling hot Friday night in the middle of July, but I like to bake cookies.  When other people start to relax after a long work week, I preheat the oven, tie on an apron, and get out the rolling pin!  I did at least wait for the sun to go down and the outside air temperature to dip a little, but after that it was right to work with Alton Brown's sugar cookie recipe (linked here), my baby-foot cookie cutter which I searched all over creation for, and a lot of flour thrown around!  Of course, my kitchen, this morning, looks like a war zone but that's little price to pay for something that will provide a joyful memory on a special day. As I said on my facebook page last night (and many times before), "It's time to clean up my kitchen so I can mess it up again."  I just wish there was a kitchen elf to empty my dishwasher at night so I don't have to unload it before loading it up again.  I'd love that.  It's very deja vu, Groundhog Day, etc. every time I clean up my kitchen!  Anyway...

These cookies are for a very special friend, Chris, who is hosting a very special baby shower.  She asked for  the cookies to be tied with citrus-y colored ribbons, and using that as inspiration, I decided to ice the cookies in citrus colors as well.  These cookies of soft little pads and tiny toes make me happy  just to look at them!  I flavored the icing with lemon extract just to carry the citrus theme that much further.  I do hope that Chris is happy with these cute little cookies.  I had fun making them on a hot Friday night!

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