Beloved recipe for sugar cookies is foolproof
This one comes with a 100-year-old pedigree.
In Saving Southern Recipes, Southern Kitchen’s Kate Williams explores the deep heritage of Southern cooking through the lens of passed-down, old family recipes.
There’s likely a different sugar cookie recipe for every home baker in the country. But when the recipe comes with a 100-yearold pedigree, it certainly merits notice.
“You probably don’t need another sugar cookie recipe,” Southern Kitchen reader Penny Harrison wrote to me in an email. Harrison’s recipe comes from her grandmother’s friend, Mossie Booth, and the cookies made a regular appearance on her grandmother’s table. “We never decorated ours,” she said. They were just “plain — very plain — cookies,” rolled thin and baked for a little extra time to develop a slight bittersweet caramel flavor and crisp, light texture.
Harrison’s cookies are far easier and less finicky to make than most. The recipe only requires one bowl, and can be stirred, mixed and re-rolled with abandon. You don’t need a stand mixer. The cookies can be baked plain, as
Harrison instructs, or cooled and decorated with as much royal icing as your 5-yearold desires.
The secret is melted butter, which was initially baffling. Wouldn’t the cookie dough spread across the baking sheet? Wouldn’t it need hours in the fridge to become stiff enough to roll? Even with the melted butter, wouldn’t Harrison’s directions to add the flour and then “beat well” result in tough cookies? Nope.
After doing a bit of research and just thinking practically about the relationship between fat and gluten, the recipe makes a lot more sense. That melted butter helps impede gluten development in the cookies by coating each speck of flour and making it more difficult for gluten strands to link up. When the goal is a crisp, thin cookie, this state is ideal.
Of course, I wouldn’t let that theory just stand on its own. I tried very, very hard to find a way to screw up the cookies.
I re-rolled scraps over and over again. I baked the cookies while the dough was warm and while it was chilled. I under-baked and over-baked the cookies. They were great each and every time, which counts as a foolproof recipe to me.
Foolproof Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookies
1 cup sugar, plus more for
sprinkling
2 large eggs, beaten 1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling the dough
2 teaspoons baking
powder
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, eggs and vanilla until smooth. While whisking, slowly pour in the butter. Continue to whisk until smooth.
Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt until fully incorporated. The dough should feel like soft Play-Doh. Divide the dough into four portions. Wrap three of the dough portions in plastic wrap.
On a well-floured counter, roll out the unwrapped portion of dough until it measures about 1/8 inch thick. Cut into shapes using cookie cutters and transfer to the prepared baking sheets about 1 inch apart. Re-roll the dough scraps and cut out additional shapes, placing them onto the baking sheet. Save any additional scraps.
Sprinkle the cut shapes with a little sugar and bake until as browned as desired, 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool on the baking sheet for 3 to 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with the remaining dough, re-rolling scraps as many times as desired.
Serve the cookies once cooled, or store in an airtight container for up to 1 week. Makes 5 to 6 dozen.
Per cookie, based on 5 dozen :54 calories (percent of calories from fat, 33), 1 gram protein, 8 grams carbohydrates, trace fiber, 2 grams fat (1 gram saturated), 10 milligrams cholesterol, 27 milligrams sodium.