Sugar Cookies

Yesterday I wanted to make some holiday cookies, but didn’t want to keep them around the house and run the risk of eating too many myself. So, I pawned them off on Pranas and his friends. I won’t lie, I had a few myself, and they were darn tasty. I also had to make them fast, so I chose a quick recipe. This is off foodnetwork.com with a few modifications by me.

Sugar Cookies
Prep Time: Approx. 15 minutes
Yield: Approx. 3 dozen

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) margarine, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.

Beat the margarine and both sugars in another medium bowl with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 30 seconds. It’s very important that you don’t use cold margarine—it will be lumpy and not light and fluffy, so it won’t mix correctly with the other ingredients.

Add the egg yolks and vanilla until fully incorporated. Slowly add the flour mixture, and continue beating until the dough comes together, stopping and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

Now, you have three options. You can make cutout cookies, slice-and-bake cookies, or rolled cookies. Since the first two options involve chilling the dough for two hours, I chose to do rolled cookies. I also have a different recipe for cutout cookies that I would prefer to use for that purpose.

So, roll the cookies into little 1-inch-ish balls with your clean hands. Don’t make them too small or they’ll be incredibly thin when flattened. Then, I wanted to make them festive, so I rolled them in colored sugar. I used red, green, and yellow. This part is completely optional, but they came out really pretty. Just pour some colored sugar out on a plate and roll the ball until coated.

Then put it on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Leave at least an inch between each ball—they will flatten.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and bake for about 12 minutes. Just watch them for the last couple minutes to make sure they’re done.

Festive and yummy! This is a really good, easy sugar cookie recipe. I think I will stick to my regular sugar cookie recipe for cutout cookies, but this one is great for rolled cookies.