Soft Sugar Cookies

It's a defiant challenge.  I tell my son I will send him a care package and maybe make cookies, what would he like?  He always says I can't make his favorite cookies.  Whaddya mean, can't?  Here's the thing.  I like my sugar cookies to snap. He likes them soft.  I thought he was referring to those Lofthouse cookies in the plastic shell at the grocery.  You know, colored sprinkles depending on the holiday.  They look enticing, yet, they are bland and rather gross.  So I hit up Pinterest and found this recipe for Soft Frosted Sugar Cookies.  Then he texted my daughter and said, No!  Not the right cookies.  How could I forget?  Nic's Grocery Store Sugar Cookies.  Oh well, he got the cookies you see here.  I'm sure he got over it.  

Soft Sugar Cookies

3 sticks unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
5 teaspoons vanilla
3 eggs
4 1/2 cups flour
4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the vanilla and mix well. Taste.  It should be heavenly.  Now add the eggs one at a time and mix just to blend.  Add the dry ingredients all at once and mix thoroughly.  Cover the dough and chill.  The recipe says an hour.  I chilled for 3 days.  It happens.  It rolls out best if it is really cold as this dough is kind of a sticky mess.

Roll into balls and flatten, they will not flatten on their own.  I bake on a Silpat or you could use parchment.  Bake at 350˚F.  You want them to no longer be moist on top, but not browned.  About 6-8 minutes in my convection oven.  Cool completely.

Icicng

About 3 cups confectioner's sugar
4 T butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
a few teaspoons milk to thin to the right consistency

Beat the butter into the powdered sugar.  Add the vanilla (real vanilla is brown so beware, you will not have white frosting!)  Add the milk until it is the right consistency to spread.  Top with sprinkles.  

These are tasty, but a little dry for me.  I packed them up and sent them to the Windy City.  Hope he loved them.  What are you waiting for?  Get in there and bake!

Nic's Sugar Cookies

 So everyone knows I make sugar cookies.  Chances are if we're friends, and there is an event in your life, and my life is not crazy out of control, there's a good chance you'll get cookies.  My crazy little brain thinks up all kinds of kooky cookie ideas, but there really aren't enough days in the year!  However, not everyone thinks I am all that and a bag of chips...I did a blog awhile back called The Cobbler Kid's Brownies when my family was feeling left out of the sweet rotation.  

So this week I baked up some Superhero sugar cookies for an event at the store to benefit Share Our Strength.  A mission to end childhood hunger right here, where we all live.  For a small donation, a child could decorate and take home a couple of superhero cookies.  So Nic decided, that would be the only way he was going to get his hands on my cookies.  Ha Ha.  But if he wants to come at the end of the allotted time and buy up whats left, I say more power to ya, and more to Share Our Strength.  Happily, my children have no idea what hunger is.

But as the summer winds down, and my oldest (Nic)  is having his "last" of everything before he heads back to the barrens of Oklahoma, he begged me to make his kind of sugar cookies. He Googled, "Grocery Store Sugar Cookies" and found these by Gale Gand. She is a pretty accomplished chef, and she may not be crazy that her cookies fit the grocery store description, but they are far superior to them, I promise!  I followed the recipe exactly, and he was the happiest kid ever.  Soft, chewy sugar cookies with a little sugar crust on the outside.  These aren't my kind of cookie, those are in the fridge begging to be baked up tomorrow and blogged.  Cookies chock full of "stuff".  But today, it is all about Nic.  So here's the recipe, and if a crispy sugar cookie with royal icing isn't what you want, these softies will fit the bill.  So, what are you waiting for?  Get in there and bake!

Gale Gand's Chewy Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3-4 Tablespoons buttermilk (I used milk and lemon juice to sour it)

Additional sugar to top cookies

Place all dry ingredients together in bowl.  In mixer, beat sugar and butter until fluffy.  Add vanilla and egg.  Add dry ingredients, and enough buttermilk to bring it together without being too wet.  Place large mounds, flattened slightly on lined cookie sheets and sprinkle a little sugar on top of each cookie.  Bake at 375 for about 9 minutes.  The edges should be golden brown.  Cool on a rack before moving them off cookie sheet.  Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

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