What would you choose for dessert; a sugar cookie or a slice of chocolate cake? If you’re anything like me and those two items were in your home, the sugar cookies would be hanging around long after the chocolate cake was polished off.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like sugar cookies, but love them… Not so much. But trying to decorate chocolate cake to give as gifts - that wouldn’t work as well as sugar cookies do. Which leads me to the reason why I’m writing this post today – I’ve come up with a sugar cookie recipe by playing around with some favorite recipes. It’s definitely tasty, although it’s still not in the ‘chocolate cake’ category. If you try it out I’d love to hear what you think in the comment section below.
Before I get to the recipe, let me share a little introduction to the ‘Polar Bear Parade’ cookies with you.
When I saw this ribbon months ago at Michael’s Craft Store I just knew I had to make a cookie version of it. Pretty colors, a simple shape and such a cute little polar bear.
These were finished before Christmas, but I wasn’t able to post them in time. If you’d like to create these, you could make just the polar bear or substitute another object for the gift instead. It’d be a nice winter-themed cookie I think. The ribbon is probably on sale now too!
I used the KopyKake drawing projector to help me draw the image (believe me – I need it!), but you might be able to freehand as it’s a fairly simple shape.
Some of these are made of a new gingerbread recipe I found on-line, but I wasn’t entirely happy with the results (taste).
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been playing around with some of my ’go-to’ sugar cookie recipes – a few of the main ones being Peggy Porschen’s
Sugar Cookie Recipe
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups butter (at room temperature)
2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
seeds from 1 vanilla bean (or 3 tsp vanilla)
5 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Instructions:
1. Cream the butter and sugar together in the bowl of an electric mixer on low to medium speed. (Use the paddle attachment). Mix until thoroughly incorporated – for about one minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a plastic spatula and mix again for a few seconds more.
Over mixing the butter and sugar in this step will cause too much air to be incorporated into the dough. If you’d like a light and fluffy cookie, that’s ideal, however the dough will spread more during baking; not ideal if you’d like the cookie to hold its shape.
2. Add eggs slowly and mix. Scrape down the bowl with your spatula at least once and mix again.
3. Cut open your vanilla bean and scrape the seeds out. Add to mixing bowl. Alternatively, add liquid vanilla extract. Stir briefly.
4. Sift your dry ingredients together. (Flour, baking powder and salt).
5. Add all of the flour mixture to the bowl. Place a large tea towel or two small tea towels between the edge of the bowl and the electric mixer so that the flour won’t escape. Mix on low speed for 3o seconds. Remove the tea towels and observe the dough mixing; when it clumps around the paddle attachment it’s ready. It’s also important at this stage not to over mix the dough (the glutens in the flour develop and the dough can become tough).
6. Roll the dough out between 2 large pieces of parchment paper. Place on a baking sheet and into the fridge for a minimum of 1 hour.
7. Roll out the dough further if you need to, and cut out cookie shapes. Place on parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Re-roll scraps and repeat.
8. Put cookie dough shapes back into the fridge for 10 minutes to 1 hour to chill again. They will then hold their shape better when baked.
9. Preheat your oven to 350°F or 176°C.
10. Bake cookies for 8-12 minutes or until the edges become golden brown. The baking time will depend on the size of your cookie.
11. Let cookies cool to room temperature and decorate!
A few notes about the recipe:
*Butter – The butter needs to be soft, or room temperature. I leave mine out the night before I do my baking. If you forget, you can grate the butter on the largest hole of your box grater, so that the sugar and butter will mix together better.
*Baking powder – I hardly use any baking powder in my recipe because the dough will spread and rise more during baking, thereby making the shape of the cookie less crisp.
*Chill your dough if it gets too soft work with. It’s a softer, sometimes sticky dough (depending on your environment as well), but in my humble opinion, makes up for it in taste.
*Read these tips here on stopping dough from spreading.
Click here for a Printer-Friendly Version of the Sugar Cookie Recipe
I’ll do an in-depth tutorial with pictures on making the sugar cookie dough in a future post.
Hope you enjoy this recipe!
xo,
Marian
This post is supported by Reader’s Digest. Try out their recipe for sugar cookies and other yummy treats!
And one more thing. I purchased Imitation Clear vanilla extract b/c I plan to use it in your icing recipe. I accidentally used this extract (instead of my good vanilla) in the dough recipe. How different will the taste be or do you think I will be able to taste a difference at all?
Also, I purchased Imitation clear vanilla extract (to use in your royal icing recipe) but accidentally used it in the cookie recipe (instead of my good vanilla.) How much do you think this will affect the taste of the cookie, or will I be able to tell a difference at all?
Hi @ Jessica B: Yes, you need to use real butter for the recipe. ‘Great for baking’ is fine as a marketing slogan for them
and indicates it can be used for baking, but the results will not always be the same.
Any time your dough is sticky (this one is a stickier one anyways though), you can add a little flour and besides the chilling you already mentioned, roll it out between two sheets of parchment paper. Hope that helps! xo
@ Jessica B: The flavouring has less bearing on the success of a recipe than using real butter or not (referring to your previous question), but generally, when using anything imitation, I add a little more to help the flavour come out. It’s not a huge deal in the success of your recipe though, I wouldn’t worry! Hope that helps! =)