Cut Out Sugar Cookies
Cookies are a holiday baking staple, but the most iconic cookie option has to be the cut out cookie!
Growing up we always made sugar cookies the week before Christmas and would decorate them with lots of icing and sprinkles. As time consuming as this can become, it’s an absolute must for me!
Now if you were like me growing up, it would irritate you to no end that your cookies would spread into unidentifiable objects. For years this bothered me and it wasn’t until I was in culinary school that I finally realized the issue: we were using a leavening agent! A leavening agent – such as baking powder or soda – is what causes your baked goods to rise and spread in the oven. Without those agents, your cookie will hold its shape.
I’ve kept my childhood cookie recipe as the base here and simple removed the leavening agent, tweaked the sugar to include brown sugar, and added a tiny bit of almond extract. These simple changes make for the perfect cut out cookie!
What you’ll need:
– 1 stick butter, room temp (4 oz)
– 3/4 cup white sugar (150g)
– 1/4 cup brown sugar (50g)
– 1 egg
-1 teaspoon vanilla
-1/8 teaspoon almond extract
– 1/2 teaspoon salt
– 2 cups flour (240g)
– 1 Tablespoon milk
– Powdered sugar for rolling out the dough
What you’ll do:
– Cream butter and sugars together until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
– Add egg, vanilla, almond extract, and salt and beat until thoroughly incorporated.
– Mix in half the amount of flour until most of the flour has been incorporated, then mix in the milk.
– Mix in the remaining amount of flour, being sure to scrape the bottom to incorporate any flour that’s stuck to the bottom of the bowl.
– Form your dough into a disc that is about 1/2 inch thick and wrap with plastic wrap. Chill the dough for a couple hours until fully chilled or overnight.
– Lightly dust a clean surface with powdered sugar. Saving the plastic wrap, place your unwrapped dough on top of the powdered sugar and then place your plastic wrap clean side up atop of the dough disc (this will prevent the dough from sticking to your rolling pin).
– Roll your dough out so that it is a quarter of an inch thick. Ever few rolls, make sure that you can lift your dough off the surface. Add more powdered sugar if needed.
– Use a cookie cutter to cut out desired shapes, rerolling out the dough when needed and keeping any unused dough in the refrigerator.
– Place cut out shapes on a lined baking sheet and place in the freezer while you preheat your oven to 350F.
– Bake your cookies for 10 minutes (they won’t change too much in color so you won’t be looking for visual cues like you normally would). Transfer to a cooling rack and allow to cool before doing any desired decorations.
-ENJOY!
A few notes:
– The almond flavor in these cookies is very mild so feel free to add more or none depending on your preference.
– Another important element to ensuring that these cookies keep their shape is keeping the dough cold. Make sure your cookies have been in the freezer at least 10 minutes before baking.
– I use powdered sugar to roll out the cookies because I find that flour can leave a bit of a flour-y taste. If you do need to use that instead, just be sure to dust off an excess flour.
– I baked my cookies in 2 batches and got a about 1 1/2 dozen. This will ultimately vary based on how large your cutters are and how thin you roll out your dough.
– If you want to make this dough ahead of time (or if you only want to make a few cookies at a time) you can store the dough in the freezer and then transfer to the refrigerator the night before using.
– Keep scrolling to see how I decorated the circle cookies!
For these cookies, I took a short cut and simply bought some of the cookie icing from Walmart. I iced the cookies white and let that set for about an hour. I then cut a very small hole in the green icing tip (a little above the indicated marking) and made a zig zag pattern to resemble a tree. (If you end up with too large a hole, transfer to a ziploc bag and cut a tiny triangle off the tip – just start small because you can always cut more off!) After making a tree, I immediately topped with rainbow non pareils.