Sugar Cookies
March 22, 2019
My love of efficiency is kicking in.
My youngest is having his first ever birthday party (he is 7) and I need to make sugar cookies.
I have an amazing recipe that is easy and fast that I use and have had rave reviews for.
But due to the lack of bakes this week we are pulling a “two birds, one stone” approach.
I am not excited about this cookie because it is a chilled cookie dough…meaning waiting. I am trying not to be biased, because I want these to be amazing, but I have such a great no-fail recipe, the bar is going to be high.
I am halving the recipe because we don’t need more baked goods lying around the house these days and I had half the butter softened to room temperature already. Ingredients in this recipe are easily cut in half.
The dough came together easily enough and was no trouble forming into a rectangle to chill….so now we wait…at least 2 hours.
Here is my real problem with chilled dough that needs to be re-rolled, it needs to be RE-ROLLED!
I know it is for keeping the shape of the cookie, but we are not supposed to wait for it to get a little softer.
It is difficult to roll chilled dough, really tough to get it to ¼ inch thickness.
My husband is rolling it out or me because nothing is happening when I do it.
Now these are for a bunch of 7-year-old boys so I am not really particular about their shape and I probably could have skipped this step and just rolled it out and cut, but that is not following Martha’s instructions.
I have this amazing Tupperware Pastry mat that has templates for rolling pie crusts and has a handy grid on it. I use it constantly.
It is a Minecraft Party so I am making square shaped cookies using the grid. I am using a pizza cutter and it is working really well, zero waste!
In the book, Martha wants to double up the trays in the oven and I don’t like that, so I am only doing one at a time.
Sugar cookies are very time sensitive, so I am adjusting and monitoring colour.
Sidebar: My dad loves technology.
He loves gadgets.
His latest is all this smart home stuff, Thermostat connected to your phone, Google Home and the like.
He loves his Google Home. He loves it so much, he got all of us kids a Google Home for Christmas.
Our kids love it and like asking it silly questions, like how many days until my birthday? 46 days
Or how far away is Jupiter? 365 million miles
What is a million x a million? one trillion
I like it for setting a timer or two from the kitchen while my hands are mucky, because I can just yell it out (and it actually listens to me when I ask it to do something).
This is an important note because it affects the timing on sugar cookies. Because you can’t see the countdown like you could if it were on the stove.
I made 3 trays of cookies. The first were too dark. I can’t see the remaining time on Google Home. I like to see my timer when it is a sensitive bake like this so they went the full 15 minutes – too much. I also didn’t re-chill this batch.
I lessened the time for the next batch and had them chill for 15 minutes in the fridge before putting them in the oven They did hold their shape better but were still a little darker than I would like.
I am starting to feel like Goldilocks.
So the third batch – which was mainly scraps, but still cookies – I chilled and left in for only 12 minutes and they came out the best. I also used the microwave timer so I could check on my time.
You can see the difference below.
Now, I am not blaming Google Home on how these cookies turned out, but it does make a difference when you can see the countdown of the timer.
So now that the cookies are done, I am decorating them with Candy Melts.
Candy Melts are colourful, easy to work with and take no time to harden. I use them a lot for sugar cookie decorating.
I used them to make Minecraft bricks here.
To me a sugar cookie is light, tender and falls apart in your mouth, almost cakey…these are not that.
These are a crisp cookie that tastes like shortbread. It was not dense, but it was not light.
It definitely was not a sugar cookie by my standards.
They were not bad, just not what I was expecting.
That was the general consensus with these.
“Oh, they’re crunchy,”
“Are these shortbread cookies?”
“I like your other ones better”
Were some of the comments on these cookies.
So, verdict in, they are a good cookie, – I mean really have you ever met a bad cookie? – but not really worth the effort.
I mean the kids ate them all, so they were not bad
Especially when compared to the other recipe that I have used frequently in the past. That is more what I am looking for in a sugar cookie and doesn’t require chilling.
It’s Bakeable.
