Sugar Cookies

AHH! I'm so terrible about this whole blogging thing. It's been months since my last post. But I'm determined to post more frequently! Call it my New Year's Resolution!

December is my favorite! There are lights everywhere, everyone is so kind, and, probably best of all, there's presents!!!!!! My husband and I have an insanely high rent this month. Like, more than double what it was last year. Yikes! That puts us in a tough spot when it comes to giving out presents. For our neighbors, I thought baking something would be perfect. It keeps the cost low and everything I make is super delicious! *Wink, wink!*

I decided to bake some sugar cookies. Mainly, because everyone loves cookies and because they're super adorable.

I found this amazing recipe from Sweetopia. Marian is like a confectionery goddess! Everything she makes is adorable and delicious. I've been following her on Facebook for a long time. Every day I see another one of her amazing creations and it makes me want to bake! Some of her cookies are here:

Isn't she amazing??? I'm hoping to get icing tips for Christmas, and then maybe I'll be able to make cute cookies too!

Marian at Sweetopia uses royal icing for her cookies. I don't like how hard royal icing is. Also, I don't have decorating tips yet so I don't want to invest in meringue powder. So instead, I used the icing recipe from i am baker. One tip I'll add is to use vanilla instead of lemon juice. It gave it a warm flavor that went well with the tablespoon that is used in the cookie recipe.

So here's the recipes copied directly from the sites:

Cookies:

2 1/2 cups butter, softened (I've substituted margarine and it turned out fine)

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

Icing:

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tbl milk

1 tbl light corn syrup

1 drop lemon juice (I used vanilla)

Cookies:

(I should mention that I used margarine this particular time because I can't afford $3 in butter. I've made it with butter once before and it was amazing. It was like crack! My in-laws and I ate two dozen in, literally, five minutes! But it's still pretty tasty with margarine.)

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).

Here's a picture of what mine looked like at this step.

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.

I wrapped mine in plastic wrap to save room in my fridge.

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.

The dough will be sticky, especially if you use margarine. So make sure you have plenty of flour on the surface you're rolling it out on.

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.

(I forgot this step! The cookies still held its shape well though.)

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.

The full recipe made a whopping 72 cookies!!

11. Let cookies cool to room temperature and decorate!

Icing:

1. Place one cup of powder sugar in sifter. Try not to skip this step! Lumps in icing are hard to fix.

2. If you are going to add food coloring (the liquid, not gel) add however many drops you need to the tablespoon you're going to use. Finish filling the tablespoon with milk.

3. Add one tablespoon milk, one tablespoon corn syrup, and one drop lemon juice.

4. Mix everything together. If it still looks pretty dry still, add a little more milk, about a teaspoon at a time. You are going to use this as an outline for your cookies so it should be thick enough to hold its shape.

5. Add more milk to your icing one teaspoon at a time. This will be your flood icing.

Here's my finished cookies. They turned out pretty cute, especially since I didn't have any icing tips! I just put the icing in a plastic bag and cut off a little corner.

Sorry this picture is upside down!

Christmas trees!

Snowflakes

Christmas bells

I hope this inspires you to make some cookies of your own! Happy holidays!!