TWD: Grandma's Sugar Cookies

I like sugar cookies, I don't love them, but I like them.  They happen to be my sister's all-time favorite kind of cookie so I've made quite a few of them and, until recently, I was a regular sugar cookie nazi.  I even have a tackle box for all of the pastry tips and gel pastes and pastry bags and all of the other "essential" decorating tools that I need for decorating the cookies (my mom got it for me -- I think that she was tired of all of the crap-o-la rolling around her kitchen) but that's in Houston, where it belongs.  Anyway, when I saw that we were making sugar cookies this week, it was really hard to squash the urge to go and buy 5 pounds of powdered sugar to make enough royal icing to float from here back to Texas and pick up my cookie decorating goodies.  But then I remembered the giant, sticky mess that accompanies the icing and that by the end of it I feel like I have icing all over me and I've absorbed enough sugary goodness to make a room full of five year olds happy.  Not to mention that the process requires time that I don't have right now.  I did buy pastry bags, a couple of tips, and red and green gel paste before I realized how crazy that was but it's ok because I'll use all of it eventually.  

Which brings me to another story.  You know how, when you're in elementary school and then on through high school, teachers always stress the importance of reading all of the directions very carefully?  I can't tell you how many times this rule has gotten me in trouble -- both in school and in cooking.  I have a horrible tendency to read very quickly through directions and miss an essential part when I'm in a hurry or I just think that I already know what to do, oops! So, it didn't even occur to me just to sprinkle these with sugar or cinnamon sugar.  Sure, Dorie calls for it in the recipe but I just threw that right out of my mind.  Luckily TWD has P&Q (thanks Laurie!) and I was pleasantly reminded that sugar cookies do not have to be an all-out, 3 day icing war.  And I happen to love cinnamon sugar and enjoy it way more than icing anyway. All this = happy Jessica.  

There are a few standards that I have for sugar cookie dough:  1) (& most important!) it must taste good.  This dough tastes good both before and after it's cooked, although I didn't really want to eat that much of it uncooked; 2) it can't be a huge pain to roll out or cut out because if it is then it involves me saying many unkind things and then the kitchen becomes a generally unhappy place.  There isn't a lot that will really ruffle my feathers in the kitchen but I don't like it when dough is hard to work with; 3) I like my sugar cookies to be soft when they're cooked, not crispy.  This dough met 2.5 of my standards:  it tastes good (as good as sugar cookie dough can taste), it's pretty easy to work with (I only had a couple of problems getting the 

dough to come away from the cutouts), and some of the cookies were soft.  Right out of the oven, they're soft (one of my snowflakes broke right away so of course I popped that straight into my mouth).  The cookies that I baked just enough stayed soft but the rest of them are crispy.  So, if you like your sugar cookies to be soft then definitely cook these on the short side of the allotted time.  

Verdict:  it's hard not to like these cookies, particularly during the holiday season.  There's just something about making sugar cookies during holidays that puts me in the spirit.  I love the sprinkles and I love the way they smell while they're baking.  The dough is easy to work with (but I wish that I didn't have an egg white left over) and I will definitely make these again. The morning that  I was going to roll out and make the cookies, my "cookie of the day" from Martha Stewart was a Scottie Dog Shortbread Cookie and I couldn't resist making a few Scottie cookies myself!  Thus, the dogs in the midst of the holiday cookies. Thanks to Ulrike at Kuchenlatein for choosing such a great holiday recipe.