Our favourite sugar cookie recipe yields a workable dough you’ll be able to rework into cutouts that maintain their form within the warmth of the oven and emerge crisp-yet-tender canvases, prepared for adorning. We love this Straightforward Sugar Cookie Icing (a riff on royal icing, made with powdered sugar and egg whites) tinted with vibrant meals coloring powder for gilding the tops of the buttery cookies. Should you’d like to drag out all of the stops for a adorning social gathering, load up on sanding sugars, sprinkles, and dragées. Or neglect all that and switch them into sandwiches full of chocolate buttercream or cream cheese frosting as a substitute.
To begin, you’ll cream butter and granulated sugar simply to mix, and not till it’s “mild and fluffy.” Not like many cookie recipes, you don’t need to whip an excessive amount of air into the butter, which may make the cookies unfold—not the objective right here. And sure, you’re utilizing chilled butter, not room temperature, making the entire course of go a lot sooner. Add a bit of peppermint or almond extract to the cookie batter in case you’d wish to play with the flavors, however not more than ¼ tsp. of both; they’re far more potent than vanilla.
Rolling out your dough between two sheets of parchment (or silicone baking mats) ensures this simple sugar cookie recipe is as supreme (and simply made) as its identify suggests, as thinly rolled cookie dough can follow even the coldest counter tops. To make your work and cleanup simpler, line your cookie sheets with extra parchment, however don’t be tempted to swap in silicone for the baking. Whereas we’re all for no waste, super-slippery silicone mats encourage spreading, which, once more, isn’t the objective right here.
If adorning with sanding sugar, sprinkle it on the unbaked cookies earlier than they go into the oven. If adorning with icing or glaze, be sure that the cookies are utterly cool earlier than adorning. You possibly can bake the cookies as much as 12 hours forward and go away them on cooling racks, loosely coated with a kitchen towel. Lastly, you should definitely add any sprinkles or different adornments earlier than the icing has set.
Should you’re pondering of assembling a cookie tin, we suggest pairing these with one other traditional like chocolate chip cookies and a few bolder choices like chewy molasses cookies or ancho-mole cookies. Retailer adorned cookies in an hermetic container for as much as 3 days.
