From My Kitchen: December 2021

 

December means Christmas, so of course, this post is going to include be about a sweet recipe. I seriously scaled down my baking and candy-making this year. I only made 1 batch of Texas Millionaires and that was for my next-door neighbor who supplies pecans for the purpose of being gifted a batch. I made a couple of batches of Eggnog Bread, with gluten this year and an Apple Cake for Christmas Eve Dessert. A couple of days before Christmas, I had a craving for bakery cookies. The problem is, there is no bakery in the Small Town. There used to be one that had amazing cookies (but the King Cake was a huge disappointment) but every time I've driven by it appears to be closed. 

I have a huge problem with cut-out sugar cookies. I can never roll the dough out evenly and I can't tell how thick it's supposed to be. I found a recipe a few years ago that I used to make cookies for the goody bags for my in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary, but they aren't "bakery cookies". They are really good, but not what I was looking for. 

A search for "bakery sugar cookies recipe" gave me exactly what I wanted. The Best Sugar Cookies really are! I used the trick that I outlined in the post about my in-laws' cookies, but I'll share it again:

2 craft sticks that are 1/4 inch are perfect. Just lay 2 down and put the dough in between, cover with parchment paper, and put the rolling pin on the sticks.

Then roll away and you have dough that is the perfect thickness. And it's even! Well, as long as the rolling pin doesn't slip or you have too much dough for the length of the sticks. I halved the dough and then rolled, so it worked well. 

If you try these cookies, make sure you follow the steps exactly. The main thing is to roll out the dough, then refrigerate. I think I only messed up 1 cookie after cutting it out, and it was because I wasn't sure which of my cookie cutters to use. After that, it was clear sailing. I put rum flavoring in this batch but I couldn't really taste it. 

The finished product:

The icing part of the recipe says to omit the vanilla flavoring for "stark white" frosting, but I put it in and the cookies were still "stark white" in my opinion. 

The cookies were such a hit that I made another batch for New Year's Eve. For this batch, I put in maple flavoring and they were delicious. I could definitely taste the difference between the ones I made the week before. While not many comments were made on the Christmas cookies, MS & YS and YS' GF all raved about how good these were. 

The New Year's Cookies:

Only 1 cookie made it past midnight! 

These cookies were so easy to make, they just took a little bit of time since the dough needs to stay in the fridge for a minimum of 1-2 hours. I kept mine in for 2 hours which was perfect. I used the "easy cookie frosting" because, well, it was definitely easier and I didn't want a "fail" on the cookies! The frosting dried in a couple of hours although the recipe says they take around 24. 

Do you have a go-to cookie recipe? If so, is it easy and quick or time-consuming?