Let me introduce my first recipe, soft sugar cookies, by saying this: I DO NOT create the recipe. Nope. I read recipes and see if I like the ingredients and try my best – except my brownie ice cream cake. Or in the case of baked goods, I make recipes from people who make deliciously amazing sweets. Those people to me are: my mom or Sally. Sally, from Sally’s Baking Addiction is a fellow blogger who I’ve been following for years now. She’s awesome, you should follow her too!
The recipe below, soft sugar cookies, are from Sally’s Baking Addiction.* Listen folks, sugar cookies take a minute. OK fine, with a toddler it’ll take forever. I involve Colette when I bake because she loves it, it takes up time, and I’m sure it’s educational too.
The cookies are broken up into essentially three parts: mix and refrigerate, bake and cool, decorate. It’s actually not bad because two out of the three parts are activities for your child. Plus you can break it up over two days by making the dough one day then baking and decorating the next. The dough itself is easy, with only one caveat – room temperature eggs and butter. This means you have to plan ahead. I know thinking ahead with a kid is super annoying but you can do it!
When baking, I give Colette her own bowl and she automatically starts scooping sugar and flour into her bowl, mixing and basically she’s making her “own cookies”. Sweet. Go ahead, I need to make the dough. Here’s the creamed sugar and butter.
Guys, I forgot to put the almond extract in, which I know for a fact would have made these cookies sing! So if you don’t have almond extract, don’t worry they taste yummy, but you should use it. It’s so much better. When the instructions say to mix the dough on high for a while, then do it. I used to never mix doughs fast enough or long enough, so perhaps that’s why some of my cookies sucked. Here’s the dough right before we roll it.
After this you’ll divide the dough into two balls, roll out separately and put them in the fridge to chill. Very important! Now you only have to refrigerate the dough for one hour but for me, life got in the way and my dough sat in the fridge for two days. No big deal, it happens and the soft sugar cookies will still taste yummy.
So the day comes. I grab the dough out of the refrigerator, give it a few extra rolls, sprinkle some flour on the surface and dough and get to work. Now the ENTIRE point of making sugar cookies was to decorate them with sprinkles for Colette. She was so excited! I prefer to cut the cookies out on a giant pad, place, or dump, the sprinkles on the cookies and then move all the cookies to the baking sheet. Colette had a blast cutting the cookies out and adding the sprinkles. She obviously decided to take a giant handful and dump them on the cookies.
And as the recipe says cook the cookies JUST UNTIL the edges are light brown. Don’t wait for the entire cookie to be brown or the edges to be dark brown – light brown is best.
Soft Sugar Cookies*
Approximate time: 4 hours (chilling & cooling)
Yield: This depends on the thickness of the dough and the size of the cookie cutter. If you use medium size cookie-cutters you’ll yield around a dozen, miniature you’ll yield around three dozen. This recipe can be doubled.
Ingredients:
Cookies
- 3/4 cup (170g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 3/4 cup (150g) granulated sugar
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract (I forgot it but it sure does make it yummy)
- 2 and 1/4 cups (281g) all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
For Decorating
- Icing (optional)
- Sprinkles
Directions:
Quick tip: Make sure to mix the dough for the times recommended. I always thought they were too long but you won’t get the cookie you’re looking for if you don’t!
- Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, add butter and beat until creamed and smooth – about 1 minute.
- Next, add the sugar, beating on high speed until light and fluffy – about 3 or 4 minutes. Make sure it’s thoroughly combined by scrapping down the sides and bottom of the bowl.
- Add the egg, vanilla, and almond extract and beat on high until fully combine – about 2 minutes. Again, scrapping down the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure all ingredients are combined.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Turn mixer to low, add about half of the flour mixture, beating until just barely combined. Add the rest of the flour, mixing until just combined. If the dough seems too soft, you can add 1 Tablespoon more flour until it is a better consistency for rolling.
- Split the dough into 2 equal parts. Sprinkling a small amount of flour onto each piece of parchment paper, roll each dough out onto it’s own paper, to about 1/4″ thickness. Stack the two flat pieces of dough (with paper) onto a baking sheet or into a very large Ziploc baggie and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 1 day. Chilling is mandatory. If chilling for more than a couple hours, cover the top dough piece with a single piece of parchment paper or wrap with saran wrap.
- Once chilled, preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line a couple of large baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Depending on the size of your cookie cutters, you may have a few batches to cook. Take only one of the dough pieces from the refrigerator and cut out your cookies, sprinkling some flour down on your surface to ensure the dough doesn’t stick. Transfer the cut cookie dough to the prepared baking sheet. Take the cookie dough scraps, re-roll and continue cutting until all the dough is used.
- We placed the sprinkles on the dough before we baked them, like in the post. If you are going to be icing them, save the sprinkles for later.
- The key here is to under-bake the cookies. Bake cookies for 8-11 minutes, rotating the baking sheet halfway through baking time and baking until very lightly colored on top and around the edges. Do not let them get really brown. Cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before icing.
- Decorate! Either make the icing and decorate how you’d like, or if you’ve done the sprinkles already, you’re done. Cookies will stay soft for about 5 days at room temperature.
- Extra tips: Unfrosted cookies, the cookies you see below, freeze well up to 3 months! Thaw overnight in the refrigerator. Frosted cookies do not freeze well. You can chill the cookie dough up to 2 days – because life gets in the way. You can also freeze the cookie dough, before rolling, for up to 3 months. Then allow to thaw overnight in the refrigerator, next bring to room temperature for about 1 hour. Then you can roll and continue with the recipe.
*This recipe was created by Sally’s Baking Addiction. The original recipe can be found at here
