I’m just about off for the holiday and making some cutout cookies to take with me, to see if my three year old granddaughter will help me decorate them. I found a great recipe at Sally’s Baking Addiction. I’ll put the ingredient list in this post, but follow her suggestions for working with the dough, especially chilling it after rolling it out—that’s right, after rolling it out. What a great idea. Anyone who has ever tried to roll out a refrigerated butter dough, knows that it’s practically room temperature and overworked by the time it’s rolled out. It’s a rich, tasty recipe that uses both vanilla and almond extracts (yes I ate some of the dough). I did re-roll the dough several times to get as many cookies as I could get, which was about 2 1/2 dozen small trees and snowflakes.
That’s all I’m doing from scratch. I’m taking packaged decorating icings, some with star tips to make the activity more fun than work for all of us.
Soft Cut-Out Sugar Cookies from Sally's Baking Addiction
See the original recipe and instructions here: http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2014/05/27/soft-cut-out-sugar-cookies/
Preheat oven to 350° after chilling dough
3/4 cup butter, room temperature
3/4 cup white sugar
1 large egg, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Mix ingredients in stages in stand mixer:
- Cream butter
- Add sugar and beat until fluffy
- Add egg, vanilla, almond and beat until combined
- Add flour and baking powder and mix until combined (my dough was pretty stiff but worked well for rolling and cutting)
Roll out each half of the dough on sheets of parchment paper to a thickness of about 1/4 inch or more if you want a thicker cookie and stack on a baking sheet. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour. Take out and cut out shapes with floured cookie cutters, so the dough doesn’t stick to them. Bake cookies on parchment-lined cookie sheets for 8-10 minutes. Try not to let edges brown. Cool before decorating.
