Sugar Cookies

The ladies in the one office where I work like that I bake. I stopped by a few weeks ago and was introduced to someone as the "one who bakes the cookies". I haven't made them anything for a while, so I asked for requests. Sugar cookies was the request. So, I made them.

This is another old recipe which turned out very lovely. The cookies are amazingly soft and moist with the added bonus of holding their shape and not crumbling all over. This recipe is definitely at the top of my "favorite cookies" list! It is easy to make and doesn't require refrigeration. If you want to roll the dough out and cut out cookies, then you may want to chill the dough for a bit since it is a very soft dough.

Sugar Cookies
3 1/4 C flour
2 t cream of tartar
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 C butter, softened
3 eggs
1 C sugar
1 t vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Lightly grease your baking sheets. You'll need to wipe off and re-grease the baking sheets between each set of cookies.

Sift together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

Cut the butter into the flour mixture until well blended. Use either a pastry cutter or a fork. Don't use your hands or the butter will melt into the flour!

It should look nice a crumbly when you are finished.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs until light and fluffy. This pretty much means to beat the eggs until the top layer starts to foam up. Add the sugar and vanilla. Mix well.

Slowly mix the flour mixture into the egg mixture. Mix until combined.

Roll the dough into 2 inch balls. Place them on the baking sheet and lightly press down. Sprinkle sugar on top. (Or you can skip the sugaring step and frost them after they cool.)

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. The bottom edges of the cookies should be very lightly browned. Don't over bake!

Immediately remove the cookies from the baking sheet and cool them on a cooling rack.

This recipe made nearly 4 dozen cookies.

Enjoy!

Chocolate sugar cookies with mint chips

I made these cookies again, but I changed the recipe a bit. I think they are a lot better now! I increased the amount of flour, swapped the butter for shortening, added a bit more salt, and completely neglected to measure the vanilla when I added it. (You can never have too much vanilla.) I will include the new recipe below.

Did you know that teaching is a very time consuming occupation? I have to write out lecture notes, create exams, and then, the most time consuming part, grade the exams and homeworks. And quizzes! So much grading. So much.

And that is why I haven't been updating too often. I haven't even really had time to bake lately. Until this past weekend, that is. I baked these delicious cookies again and both of the posted recipes of banana bread. I will let you know which version of banana bread is better, if I can figure that out.

Chocolate sugar cookies with mint chips (updated!)
1 C sugar
1/2 C shortening
1.5ish t vanilla
1 egg
2 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and cooled
1/2 to 1t salt
1 1/4 C flour
1 C Andes Creme De Menthe baking chips
Some sugar for pressing

The method follows the same as before (can be found here). It still only makes about 3 dozen cookies, which is probably plenty for most people.

Grandma's Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies

Finally! A new recipe! The delay in posting was caused by a few things. First, the power cord for my laptop decided to break in half. My laptop sadly does not operate on magic and needs electrons to function. Second, I picked up the textbooks that I will be using for teaching, so I've been busy over-preparing for the fall semester. The one book is just weird which makes the scheduling of what to teach when complicated.

Anyway...

These cookies aren't my grandma's sugar cookies, that is just the title of the recipe in the one cookbook. These cookies are very soft and they retain their softness. The sugary-ness isn't overwhelming, which is nice. You can frost these or just sprinkle them with sugar. I would try using a large crystal sugar and not a fine sugar like I used.

The recipe suggested rolling the dough out and cutting out cookies, but I just rolled the dough into balls and smushed them with a sugared glass. This recipe made around 5 dozen cookies. It will make more or less depending on what shape and size you want your cookies to be. The recipe was also lacking directions, so I'm not sure if I was supposed to let the milk mixture get sour before using it or not.

Grandma's Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies
2 C sugar
1 C shortening
2 eggs
1 t baking soda
1 t vinegar
Milk (almost 1 cup)
2 t baking powder
4-5 C flour

Cream together the shortening and sugar. I did this with a wooden spoon. Wooden spoons are the best kitchen utensil.

Add the eggs and mix until blended.

In a measuring cup, combine the baking soda and vinegar. Add enough milk to make 1 cup. Stir together. Slowly stir this into the sugar mixture. This will make it very thin.

Add 1 cup of flour to the mixture and stir. Add the baking powder and slowly add more flour, mixing between each addition. Add enough flour to make a soft dough. Near the end, you may need to mix by hand.

Roll the cookie dough into balls and press with a sugared glass. Or roll out the dough on a floured surface, sprinkle generously with sugar, lightly press in the sugar, and cut into shapes. Or anything else you can think of doing to make a cookie shape.

Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 6-10 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies. The bottoms will start to brown, but the tops will not.

Cool for a minute and then remove to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

S'mores Cookie Bars

The internet has a lot of recipes and I have a small subset of these recipes bookmarked to make at some point in the future. For this post I wanted something simple to make that was also very unhealthy, so I looked through my bookmarked recipes. I rediscovered this one for S'mores cookie bars.

These are delicious. They're slightly too sweet for me, but that's okay. I will make these again at some point, but I'll use a good dark chocolate instead of the Hershey's milk chocolate. Dark chocolate just has a better flavor (in my opinion!).

This recipe comes from Une Gamine dans la Cuisine, which is one of the few food blogs I currently follow. She got this recipe from Baking Bites who got the recipe from...? I'm not sure. This recipe seems to be everywhere on the internet, so there is no saying where it originated. There are many slight variations as well. Here is mine.

S'mores Cookie Bars (Printer friendly PDF version)

1/2 C butter, unsalted, softened

1/4 C brown sugar, packed

1/2 C white sugar

1 egg

2 t vanilla

1 1/3 C flour

3/4 C graham cracker crumbs (or 7 full sheets, smashed to crumbs)

1 t baking powder

1/4 t salt

4 or 5 chocolate bars

1 1/2 C to 2 C marshmallow fluff

Stir together the flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. Note: If you don't have graham cracker crumbs, take the sheets of graham crackers and place them in a large sealable plastic bag. Wrap a dish towel around the bag and use a rolling pin to crush the graham crackers into crumbs. Be sure to occasionally shake up the bag to help crush the crackers evenly!

Cream together the sugars and butter until fluffy.

Beat in the egg and vanilla.

Slowly stir in the flour mixture and mix until combined. The dough will be kind of dry looking.

Press half of the dough into the bottom of a well greased 8x8 inch pan. I used a 9x9 inch pan and it worked out okay.

Layer the chocolate bars on top of the cookie dough. Leave 1/4 to 1/2 inch of dough around the edges.

Spread the chocolate bars with marshmallow fluff. To make the marshmallow easier to spread, heat up the jar in a bowl of hot water while preparing the recipe up to this point. Stir the fluff before spreading.

Using the rest of the cookie dough, make a layer on top of the marshmallow fluff. I did this by pressing the dough into flat pieces with my hands and placing it on top. Press the dough down along the edges of the pan to make a seal.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes or until the top starts to brown.

Let cool for 15 minutes before slicing. Or slice right away if you are impatient. It would most likely be delicious with some ice cream!

Enjoy! 

PB Cookies

Peanut butter cookies were requested earlier this week, so I made them. This recipe is *almost* identical to the previously posted peanut butter cookie recipe, but it has some extra baking soda and a bit more flour (maybe). I'm going to go ahead and claim that the difference is enough to justify another recipe post!

Also, pretend that this was posted on Tuesday. It will probably be Sunday by the time I have this up. My week has been crazy and I haven't had much time to work on this. I had the pictures all edited and ready to go, but I never got around to typing this up. So here is a lazily typed up recipe. Good luck.

PB Cookies (Printer friendly PDF version)

1 C shortening

1 C white sugar

1 C brown sugar

1 C peanut butter

2 eggs

3 C sifted flour

2 t baking soda

1 t vanilla

Put the shortening, sugars, peanut butter, and eggs into a mixing bowl. Make it creaming and homogenous-ish. 

Add the vanilla, baking soda, and flour. Stir it up. Make sure you scrape the bowl or you might have dry crumblies at the bottom of the bowl. Those don't make good cookies. I wasted some dough.... sigh.

Form the dough into balls with your hands. Place on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Press a criss-cross shape into them with a floured fork.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 to 12 minutes, depending on the size of the dough disks.

Let cool on the cookie sheet for a minute and then remove the cookies to a cooling rack.

Eat lots of cookies.

Enjoy!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are called "Cowboy Cookies" in the one little cookbook I have. I have absolutely no idea why they have that name, but they are delicious. These are an extra good version of chocolate chip cookies that just happen to have oatmeal in them. The cookies are nice and soft and chocolatey. I do suggest you make these. I will be making them again!

The dough seemed a bit too sticky after I mixed everything together, so I added a few tablespoons of extra flour to fix that problem. Whenever I have sticky chocolate chip cookie dough, the cookies end up as flat and melted blobs. You can add some extra flour at the beginning or wait and see how the dough turns out if you follow the recipe.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

2 C sifted flour

1/2 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

1 C white sugar

1 C brown sugar (packed)

1 C shortening

2 eggs

2 C rolled oats (not the instant kind!)

1 t vanilla

12 oz chocolate chips

Sifte together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

Cream together the shortening and sugars.

Beat in the eggs until fluffy.

Stir in the flour mixture.

Add the rolled oats, vanilla, and chocolate chips. Mix until nicely distributed.

Drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Let cool for a minute on the cookie sheet before removing to cooling racks.

Enjoy!

Gobs

There has been some complaining lately from the people who eat what I bake for this blog. Those people were complaining about a lack of frosting. To fix that, I decided to make these "gobs" which are filled with a lot of frosting. These are basically two cupcake tops with a glob of frosting in between.

The frosting that comes with this recipe is a flour frosting. I didn't use it. It turned out fine when I made it, but it wasn't sweet and I don't think it had very much flavor. I threw the flour frosting away and then made the old Wilton recipe with 1/4 t butter flavoring added to make it a buttercream frosting. This was a good decision.

The recipe I have only makes chocolate gobs and not everyone here is a fan of chocolate. To appease the taste testers, I divided the ingredients in half and made chocolate and yellow gobs. To make the yellow gobs, just replace the cocoa with flour. You can add a bit more vanilla as well, or any other flavoring you desire. You can also use any frosting in these. They are very customizable!

Gobs (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

2 C sugar

1/2 C shortening

2 eggs

1 C sour milk

1 C boiling water

1 t vanilla

4 C flour

2 t baking soda

1 1/2 t salt

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 C cocoa

Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, and cocoa. Set aside.

Cream together the sugar, shortening, and eggs.

Stir in the sour milk, boiling water, and vanilla until well combined.

Slowly mix in the flour mixture. Be sure this is well combined.

Drop spoonfuls of batter onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 425 for 5 minutes. I made these a bit too large, so I had to bake them for 6 minutes.

Let cool completely. Make some frosting and then assemble!

Enjoy! 

Congo Bars

I'm sure you are all wondering by now how I choose which recipe I will make. And even if you aren't wondering that, you could pretend to wonder such a thing and humor me. The proces is: If I don't have a taste for something specific, I just start looking through the recipes while paying attention only to the ingredients without regard to the category or title of the recipe. It goes something like, "I have sugar. Yep, eggs, too. No, no butter milk. Next." And, eventually, I find a recipe that I have all the ingredients for that also doesn't contain too many ingredients that I either can't eat (such as cream cheese) or have no interest in eating (such as figs).

Today I stumbled upon the recipe for these congo bars. The large amount of brown sugar in the recipe. I didn't realize that these "congo bars" are just a type of chocolate chip cookie bar until I was making them.

They are nice and chewy and chocolately. I like these better than the previous recipe for chocolate chip cookie bars that I posted. Unless you don't like brown sugar very much, I vote that you make these. The recipe makes a decent amount of cookie as well. I used two 9x9 inch pans and the cookies are approximately 1/2 inch thick. Be sure to grease and flour the pan or the cookies will be difficult to remove.

Congo Bars (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
2/3 C shortening
2 1/4 C brown sugar, packed
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 t vanilla
2 3/4 C sifted flour
1/2 t salt
2 1/2 t baking powder
1 C chopped nuts (optional)
12 oz chocolate chips

Place shortening and brown sugar in the mixing bowl.

Cream them together.

Pour in the eggs and vanilla.

Mixy mix.

Dump in the flour, salt, and baking powder.

Mixity mix mix mix.

Mix chocolate chips mix mix stir.

Press and spread the dough.

Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes or so. Don't overbake these or they wil probably be rocks and not cookies.

Cool it and then cut into pieces. As many or as few as you want. You can even just have two big cookies if that is what you want.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Sugar Cookies with Mint Chips

Chocolate is one of the best foods ever. It is improved only by the addition of mint. When I saw these Andes Mint chips in the baking aisle a few weeks ago, I knew exactly what I was going to use them for. I just had to find a chocolate sugar cookie recipe in my mess of recipes first.

Luckily, there was a Chocolate-Mint Cookie recipe that had a chocolate sugar cookie as a base! I may make these cookies in the future, but for now I'm just using the cookie dough base. These cookies are very simple to make and delicious. The cookie stays mostly soft but hardens around the edges. The slightly crunchy edges combined with the mint chips give these cookies a great texture. The mint chips are, of course, optional.

I'm aware that strange people exist who don't like the combination of mint and chocolate. I only accept this fact because that leaves more cookies for me. Since this recipe only makes about 30 cookies, I have less motivation to find someone to share these with. I typically don't eat a lot of what I bake, but I have consumed nearly half of these cookies already.


Note: I made these recently (6/26/11) and I forgot how sticky and soft the dough is. That is normal. If it bothers you, add a few tablespoons of flour.

Chocolate Sugar Cookies with Mint Chips (Printer-friendly PDF Recipe)

1 C sugar

1/2 C butter, softened and unsalted

1 t vanilla

1 egg

2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled

1/2 t salt

1 C flour

1 C Andes Creme De Menthe baking chips

Some sugar for pressing

Cream together the sugar, butter, vanilla, and egg.

Add the unsweetened chocolate and salt. 

Mix well.

Slowly stir in the flour until well combined. Add the mint chips and mix them in.

Roll the dough into 1 inch balls and place on a cookie sheet. Press down the cookie dough balls with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar.

Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 8-9 minutes. Remove from oven and remove the cookies from the cookie sheets. Cool the cookies completely on a cooling rack.

Enjoy!