[Recipe] Sugar Cookies With a Twist (or Two)

Here is the sugar cookie recipe that we used to bake our new header in celebration of our second anniversary. It’s a very simple recipe, but we have a few twists at the end of this post that will turn this into a great Christmas baking addition.

Sugar Cookie Recipe

Ingredients

• 5 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1-1/4 cups unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2-1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 4 eggs
• 4 teaspoons vanilla extract
• A pinch of salt

Pretty straightforward, right? It requires the basic baking ingredients that you probably all have in your pantry.

Preparation

1. Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl
2. In another large bowl, beat butter with sugar for around 2 minutes until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, then beat in vanilla extract.

   

3. With a wooden spoon, gradually stir in the flour mixture until evenly blended.

   

4. If the dough is too sticky to form into a ball, stir in extra flour. Add 2 tablespoons at a time until dough is no longer sticky and you can roll it into a ball. It should take at most another 1/2 cup flour.

   

5. Divide the dough into 4 and press them into a disc shape. Wrap separately and put them in the fridge for at least 1 hour, until firm.

   

6. Preheat oven to 375 F (~190C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper or spray with oil.
7. Take the dough out from the fridge, one disc at a time. Roll them on a lightly floured surface to no more than 1/4 inch thick (I personally like my cookies thinner so my recommendation would be just slightly thicker than 1/8 inch).

   

8. With a cookie cutter, cut out some rounds.

   

9. Place the cookies on baking sheets about 2 inches apart.
10. Bake on the middle rack of the pre-heated oven for about 8-10 minutes, until they’re pale golden. (We used a 3.5 inch ring cutter – which makes gigantic cookies that took about 9 minutes to bake.) Remove and let cool completely. And repeat with remaining dough.

    

Sugar Cookies with a Twist (or Two)

So, how do you make regular sugar cookies more interesting?

In our case, we used alphabet/number cookie cutters to spell out VanFoodies and the number 2 in the centre of half of the rounds. Then, on the back of the full rounds, we spread a layer of raspberry jam and dulce de leche, just enough so that the filling shows through when you top it with the cut-out cookies.

We also bought these cookie cutters at Superstore that are about 2.5 inches wide. They’re built in such a way that makes it easy to cut out the centres. $5 for a set of 4 (with different cut-out shapes), pretty handy tools to have. We made some cookies with those cutters as well. These took about 8 minutes to bake.

What else can you do?

• Buy some Christmas-related cookies cutters (or just use your existing ones) and make Christmas shapes

  

• Sprinkle some icing sugar on the top cookies. (Tip: Do it before assembling the cookies will prevent the icing sugar from covering up the filling.)

  

• Add varieties in your filling – we start you off with raspberry jam and dulce de leche, but the options are endless. We also tried Nutella which was pretty good. Some other possibilities are chocolate fudge sauce, peanut butter, strawberry jam, etc. How about just trying it with all kinds of sauce/spread/condiments that you can find in the pantry/fridge? Just have fun with it!

  

• How about – spelling out your own name?

  

Final Thoughts

If we only used the Superstore cookies cutters, this recipe would make around 72 sandwich cookies. It’s easy to cut everything by half if it’s too many cookies for you. The key is to be creative and make something ordinary fun and interesting. I think with a few twists these cookies will make a very nice Christmas present for friends and family. Enjoy!