Sugar Cookie-a-go-go!
FOUR--count 'em--FOUR recipes to choose from.
Butter cookies. Sugar cookies. Slice-and-bake cookies. Cut-out cookies. Fanciful iced sugar cookies. The recipes are numerous. The choices are endless. The variations in texture overwhelming.
An old-fashioned “country store” vanilla cookie.
A versatile Hungarian butter cookie that is happy rolled-out, sliced-and-baked or made into Nutella-filled cookies.
My absolute favorite sugar cookie, the brown sugar cookie.
My daughter’s favorite recipe for making fancy iced sugar cookies.
Old-Fashioned Country Store Vanilla Cookies
I’ve written about my favorite mid-century cookbook before, and will again, but for the sake of space, I’ll be brief: Mildred Knopf was the sister-in-law of Alfred A. Knopf (he of publishing fame). She was a grand entertainer and her cookbook is a collection of elegant and innovative (for our time and hers) recipes, gathered from friends, former family cooks from Hungary and Germany who really seemed to know their baked goods. Knopf was also a realist, and knew most women were the head chef of the household in the 50s and her recipes are simple and reassuring.
I made two of her sugar cookies, a plain vanilla cookie, and a soft sugar cookie.
The vanilla cookie is the one below. It is a delicate, soft, quiet little cookie. Elegant, too. Madeleine-like in its delicacy and flavoring. (The other soft sugar cookie was pillowy soft, but needed help on the flavor front. Watch this space.)
Country Store Vanilla Cookies
from Cook, My Darling Daughter, Mildred Knopf.
What You’ll Need:
6 ounces butter, room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Toppings: colored sprinkles, cinnamon-sugar, cardamom-sugar, nuts
What You’ll Do:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line your baking sheets with parchment paper.
Cream the butter and the sugar together until smooth. I did this all by hand, so the idea is to just cream it together, not go all crazy with making it light and fluffy.
Add the eggs, one at a time. The mixture may look curdled. Don’t worry. Add the salt and the vanilla and mix to combine.
Sift the flour over the mixture and stir until fully combined. The mixture should look smooth, with no visible lumps of butter.
Two choices. A. Make delicate little cookies: Drop by teaspoonfuls onto the baking sheet leaving 3 inches between each, cuz they spread, bake for about 7 minutes until just golden at the edges; B. Make big, old-fashioned cookies: Drop 2 tablespoons worth of dough. Lightly press down on the tops. Bake for 10 to 11 minutes until the edges are light brown. I like these sprinkled with a mixture of sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom.
*****
A Simple, Versatile Hungarian Butter Cookie
My grandma Jenni was from Sopron, Hungary and was a notably good cook. I made my first chocolate cake with her and was raised to think Austro-Hungarian desserts were the gold standard. (That said, I also grew up in a house that served Entenmann’s with pride—GOLDEN FUDGE CAKE—so don’t think we were snobs about dessert.)
This easy recipe makes a buttery cookie, that can be crunchy (bake for the longer amount of time), or crun-chewy (bake for a shorter amount of time). I made cut-outs with the dough, did some slice-and-bake and then, the piece of resistance, made baby Nutella pop-tarts. The Nutella recipe will be posted on Tuesday. In the meantime, make the dough. Try these uses for the dough below.
Hungarian Butter Cookies
Makes 3 to 4 dozen cookies
What You’ll Need:
1/2 cup (2 sticks/225 grams) butter, cut into cubes
1/2 cup (100 grams) white sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
(You can also add any citrus zest you like, or any other flavorings. I am partial to lemon extract)
1 cups (250 grams) all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Thing to roll slice and bake cookies in such as sprinkles or maple sugar
What You’ll Do:
With a stand- or hand-mixer, beat the butter for a minute on medium speed to make it malleable. With the mixer on low speed, slowly pour in the white sugar, then raise the speed to medium and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes, stopping once or twice to scrape down the bowl.
Add the egg and vanilla (and any other flavorings) and beat on low speed until incorporated. And yes, scrape down the bowl.
Add the flour and salt and on low speed, beat until just combined. Scrape, scrape, scrape. Then raise the speed to medium-high and beat until the mixture is smooth, about 30 seconds more.
To make cut-out cookies:
Divide the dough in two, and shape each into 2-inch high disks. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured board, and cut shapes out with cookie cutters that dipped in flour. Transfer cookies to baking sheets. Decorate with sprinkles, or leave plain to be iced later. Bake for 10-11 minutes until just beginning to turn golden for crunchy cookies; less time for crun-chewy cookies and more time for rock-like ones.
To make slice-and-bake cookies
Divide the dough into two pieces. Gently (don’t get too handsy, people) roll the dough into a log-shape. Wrap in plastic wrap or parchment and refrigerate over night.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment. Roll the still-wrapped log of dough a few times back and forth on your counter to make the dough more a perfect cylinder and, bonus, warms the edge of the dough a bit to make it happier to accept sprinkles, etc. Roll the logs in sprinkles, nuts, etc. of your choice, slice the width of your choice and bake for 8 to 12 minutes depending upon thickness and levels of crunch.
(My favorite thing? I sliced my cookies about 1/4-inch, then rolled and dipped them in maple sugar. Maple sugar is more precious to me than truffles.)
My All-Time Favorite Sugar Cookie: The Brown Sugar Cookie
This recipe doesn’t make those sugar cookies—you know the ones—sturdy like a shire horse, who can hold up to gallons of royal icing draped over them.
Thanks to generous amounts of vanilla and brown sugar, the resulting cookie is mellow with caramel flavors. Corn starch ensures they crumble delicately, then melt in your mouth.
I’ve been making these cookies for (counts up years in head, shakes head in disbelief), er, a while. A good long while. They are adapted from one of my all-time favorite cookbooks, Classic Home Desserts, by Richard Sax, a thoughtful, genius food writer who died much too early.
Let me know if they change your mind about sugar cookies.
Brown Sugar Cookies
Yield: About 6 dozen cookies (depends on the size of your cookie cutters)
What You’ll Need:
2 sticks (8 ounces/229 grams) unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces
1/2 cup (100 grams) light brown sugar
2 teaspoons real vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup (200 grams) all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
4 Tablespoons (28g) cornstarch
What You’ll Do:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and cornstarch.
Using a stand/hand mixer, food processor or a wooden spoon and your extremely buff forearms (this is in case Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is a fan of my recipes), combine the butter, sugar and vanilla and mix until lighter in color (about 2 minutes).
Sprinkle the flour mixture over the top and blend (pulse if using a food processor) until just combined and beginning to clump. At this point, i use my hands to bring the dough together in a few quick motions.
At this point, if the dough seems very soft, let it chill for an hour before rolling out. If it gets too cold, it will crack and be a pain to roll out (simply leave it on the counter to warm a little at that point.) I often roll them out straight away, so feel free. The dough can be a little fussy (anything so simple, that ends up tasting as nice is allowed to be), so be sure to flour your board and rolling pin generously. Roll a small portion of the dough at a time to 1/4-inch thick. I usually make them thin and wafer-like. You do you.
Cut shapes out of the dough, saving the scraps to re-roll together at the end. Sprinkle with colored sugar or cinnamon sugar. Bake for 8 to 12 minutes, until just golden on the edges. If baking more than one cookie sheet at a time, remember to rearrange the pans back to front and top to bottom once during the cooking cycle.
Let cool a few minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a cooling rack. As members of the shortbread family, these cookies keep nicely for a few weeks, esp. if kept away from people who will eat them.
Actually Delicious Sugar Cookies for Icing and Decorating the Heck Out Of
My daughter is a multi-talented, intelligent, genius-child and a gifted artist. Hi, Cate! But she had no interest in baking cookies with me until these cookies, which you’ll note, have absolutely nothing to do with me. Shout out to Sally of Sally’s Addiction!
I believe a touch of lemon oil or extract should be added to the royal icing, just to give a pop of flavor. And my daughter does listen to me about that.
I made the Hungarian sugar cookies. But the recipe must have been wrong. I had to add flour because the batter was too runny. They were still very difficult to roll out. And then they were totally tasteless. I was so disappointed. I’ve been making my family’s sugar cookie recipe for 50+ years. I thought these were easier but would taste the same.
Barbara T
Wow!