Baking sugar cookies has been a holiday tradition in my family ever since I was a little girl. My mom would make the dough and roll it out, and my brother and I would pretend to help by occasionally punching out some shapes with the cookie cutters. Then my mom would bake them. After they cooled, she would make the frostings in all different colors, sit my brother and I down with a bunch of decorating supplies, and we would go at it. Since my brother is six years older than me, it didn't take long for him to grow out of this tradition, so I was soon doing the decorating by myself. My mom decided that the whole process was just too much to go through when I was the only one doing the decorating, so she decided to put an end to our tradition. I did not agree. I decided that I was going to make and decorate the cookies by myself. Needless to say, it didn't go so well for me.
My mom used the same cookie recipe every year from a Christmas magazine from the late 80's with torn, yellowed pages and the scribbles of my then-toddler brother. I found the magazine and followed the recipe exactly (or so I thought). The batter called for margarine, which, I am not a huge fan of, but I used it anyway. I must not have used enough flour, because the dough was SO sticky, that every time I attempted to scrape down the sides of the bowl, more and more dough would cling to the spatula instead of releasing. I made the mistake of plunging my hands into the dough in order to help un-stick the spatula, which only resulted in hands COVERED with sticky dough that WOULD NOT COME OFF!!! It was like the original version of "The Blob," only with more screaming and crying. After dousing it in what I estimate to be at least another three cups of flour, I finally got the dough off of my hands and it started to resemble an actual cookie. When I baked them, however, the cookies came out of the oven very thin, crispy, and covered in tiny indents. I know what you're thinking, "I thought you said you were GOOD at this, unlike cake." Patience my friend, I'm getting there.
Even though, after that year, I swore to myself I'd never attempt making sugar cookies again, I broke my vow and decided to play with the recipe a little bit. I'm not sure what I did differently the second time around, but the cookies certainly came better than they had the first time. Because of the amount of work, however, I still told my mom, "Please, if I ever say to you again that I'm going to make sugar cookies, hit me over the head with a skillet. PLEASE." While she didn't go for the skillet idea, she agreed with me that she would try to stop me the next time I decided to make cookies. She lied.
I made cookies several more times after that, mostly around Halloween when I had my annual Halloween party. I still hadn't perfected the recipe, but people still really seemed to enjoy them. I went between using royal frosting and store bought tub frosting, depending on how ambitious I was feeling, but neither of them really did the job well. Also, the fact that I was still using margarine in the batter made the cookies so much harder to work with, and, as a result, made the rolling process take much longer than it should have. I decided that I needed to look for a recipe that used butter instead of margarine. I did a quick internet search, and found a great recipe on Allrecipes.com, courtesy of Jill Saunders, which is the recipe I still use to this day. I always AT LEAST double it, because so many people want to be on the receiving end of these cookies, it's not even funny:
1 1/2 cups unsalted butter
2 cups sugar (I use 1 cup Truvia baking blend instead; there's enough sugar in the frosting)
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
(*Side note* I honestly think this recipe uses a little bit too much flour, so feel free to cut it back to more like 4 1/2 cups if you, like me, have a hard time getting the flour to fully incorporate )
First, you're going to want to soften the butter just enough so that it will yield slightly to gently pressure. Don't liquify it. It's best to leave all of the ingredients out of the fridge for about an hour so that they are at room temperature before you mix them. Honestly though, this batter is very forgiving. Don't worry if the butter's stage of softness isn't perfect. Once the butter is softened, beat it together with the sugar/sugar substitute in an electric mixer until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Next, beat in the eggs, one at a time, waiting until each egg is fully incorporated until adding the next egg. After the eggs are fully incorporated, add the vanilla. Mix your dry ingredients (flour, salt, and baking powder) in a separate bowl. Once they are fully combined, slowly beat them into your wet mixture. You'll know you're doing everything right if your mixer groans, sputters, and begs for mercy. You may even smell defeat. This is a sign that everything is mixing just perfectly. Once all of your ingredients have been mixed, cover and chill the dough for at least one hour before rolling the batter. This allows the butter to harden up and makes the dough easier to work with. I usually just make the dough the night before and put it in the fridge overnight.
Once the dough has chilled for at least an hour, you can start rolling it out. Depending on whether I double or triple the recipe, I usually work with about 1/4th of the dough at a time. You're going to need a large, flat surface to work on.
Dust your flat surface lightly with an even layer of flour. Take out 1/4th of your dough and leave the rest in the fridge so that it stays cool while you work. Just a warning, the dough is going to be ROCK SOLID. You will probably need a large metal spoon to scoop it out. Don't freak out! That's how it's supposed to be! It will soften as you work with it. Take the dough you removed from the refrigerator and place it on your floured surface. You're going to want to smoosh it down a bit with your hands to make it easier to roll out. Once you've smooshed it a bit, dust the top of it lightly with a little bit of flour, run some flour over your rolling pin as well, and roll the dough out into a 1/4th to 1/2 inch-thick circle. This is a work out, just warning you, since, at this stage, the dough is still pretty hard. It's not sticky at all though, which is fabulous.
Once you roll it out, you can start cutting out shapes with whatever cookie cutters you want. I like to use larger cookie cutters because the cookies really don't spread much, if at all, but you can use whatever you have on hand. Place your cut-outs onto non-stick cookie sheets. You're not supposed to grease them, but, what I do is, I spray a piece of paper towel with a little bit of Pam and just rub it on the cookie sheets. This keeps the cookies from sticking, but doesn't make them spread out any more than they should. You're going to have a lot of dough scraps after you've cut out all of your shapes. Usually, what I do is, I re-roll the scrap pieces one more time, and whatever scraps I have left after the second roll, I stick back into the refrigerator. When I've repeated the rolling-out process with the other 3/4ths of batter still in the refrigerator, I take the scraps left over from every second-roll, smoosh them together, and do one final roll. I know, that's a lot of rolling, but hey, lots of rolling means lots of cookies!
Now for the fun part. Decorating! I highly suggest you grab at least one other person to do this with you because the time will go by much faster and you'll have a lot more fun. I always shanghai my best friend Brittany into doing it with me. She doesn't mind. Even if she did, she still gets to take home a bunch of the cookies, so it's worth it. Plus, she's an art major, so, bonus for me! I don't trust a lot of other people to decorate with me, but her, she is a pro. The first thing you need is a piping bag. You can make your own out of a ziplock bag and a coupler set, which you can buy at pretty much any grocery store. All it is is a small, plastic tube-like piece, a metal tip, and a plastic screw that fastens around the outside of the bag and holds the coupler in place. First, cut off a small piece from the corner of one end of a medium-sized ziplock bag. Place your metal tip on top of the coupler, and shove both through the corner hole of your bag. Then, screw the coupler ring around the coupler on the outside of the bag to hold the coupler and tip in place. Voila! Pastry bag! Now that you have your bag made, fill it with either home-made frosting, or, if you're me, store-bought tub frosting (my favorite is Betty Crocker whipped vanilla, chocolate, or buttercream). You can either leave the frosting as-is, or mix it with some kind of food coloring in order to make it befitting to the theme of your cookies. Once you've filled your piping bag with frosting, squeeze a thin outline around the edges of each cookie, like so:
I like to use different colors for each cookie, if appropriate. Once you outline all of your cookies, you're going to fill them with royal icing. To make royal icing, you're going to mix powdered sugar, milk, and a couple of drops of some kind of flavoring (I usually use vanilla, but you could also use lemon, mint, etc) and any desired food coloring in a small bowl until the mixture is relatively thin, but not runny. I can't really give you a recipe for this, you just have to do it to texture (it's kind of a honey-like texture). Once you've mixed the icing, spoon a small amount into the center of each cookie. It will spread out slowly to cover the entire surface area of the cookie until it hits the outline of thicker frosting, but you can help it into crevices with your spoon. Use as much as you need, but don't let it flow over the outline of thicker frosting.
Once the cookies are frosted and iced, you can go ahead and add whatever other decorations you want, but you have to work relatively quickly because the royal icing will harden. Congratulations! You made it through all of that! I probably haven't convinced any of you to go out and try this for yourself, but I assure you, the results are worth it, and whoever I share these with is always super appreciative. I always get a lot of compliments on these cookies, and they're great for practicing your creativity and artistic ability. Especially around Christmas and Halloween. For example:
So, you are now armed with the knowledge you need to bake these cookies for yourself. Just a reminder, this is not a quick process, and you WILL get messy, but if you follow my guidelines and work with one or several close friends, you'll have a lot of fun. You'll also be able to show of your superior baking abilities wherever you bring them and be showered with compliments. Go you! Like I said, knowledge of the universe my friends. Now go forth and bake!
~Felicia
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