Sugar cookies are one of the most popular baked goods on earth. This might be because they require relatively few ingredients and can be customized in an endless variety of decorative ways, but it's mostly just because they taste delicious. The state of Pennsylvania, reportedly where the sugar cookie recipe was perfected by German Protestant settlers in the mid-1700s, went so far as to make it their official state cookie. Sugar cookies can also easily be decorated with icing, sprinkles, chocolate, fruit and countless other toppings in order to dress them up for whatever holiday or event you're celebrating.
Let's make sure your kitchen is ready to make sugar cookies. You'll need some basic cooking supplies: measuring spoons and cups, mixing bowls and spoons, a rolling pin, cookie sheets, oven mitts and cooling racks. If you want to save yourself a bit of handwork, replace the mixing spoons with a hand blender. Wax paper will make rolling out the dough much easier, and of course you're going to want to pick out one or more of the countless cookie cutter designs available for every occasion and interest. Lastly, you might also want to get a childproof door gate to keep your kids or other loved ones from stealing all of your dough while you're trying to bake.
Now that you've got your tools, it's time to get your ingredients together. If you do much baking, you very well might have everything you need to make sugar cookies right in your kitchen. Of course there are variations, so consult your recipe, but here's a typical "need" list: Flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, vanilla, baking power, salt, and some form of lemon peel, rind or extract.
Even though the recipes for sugar cookies are typically pretty simple, you need to add an extra hour or two to your cooking time, because between making the dough and rolling it out for cutting, you need to chill the dough in your refrigerator so it's firm enough to work with.
OK, onto the sugar cookie recipes:
- Here's a tried and true recipe that requires just nine ingredients: KitchenDaily Sugar Cookies. It does call for finely shredded lemon peel, so you'll need to add a lemon grater to your list of kitchen tools.
- This Sugar Cookies recipe from SimplyRecipes adds an extra step by including instructions for making and adding frosting to your dessert.
- By cooking longer and at a lower temperature, this Tender Sugar Cookies Recipe creates, as you'd expect, a softer, chewier morsel.
- eHow's Sugar Cookies How-To features a slight variation on the classic recipe and adds several photos to make things easier for new bakers.
- This Sugar Cookies Slices Recipe lets you combine two different colors of dough to create spiral, butterfly or bell-shaped designs for extra-special events.