It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas Cookie Time

Holidays are all about traditions and baking cookies has got to be the sweetest one of all, right?

My daughter, Claire, and our friend, Bridget, and I spend one Saturday in December making a huge, sugary mess, crafting edible masterpieces on gingerbread and sugar cookies. I've become a fan of meringue powder for making frosting of substance. I'm a sucker for sprinkles of all colors and textures, too.

This season, there's a hefty new cookbook that's going to give us some new inspiration. Linda J. Amendt's 400 Sensational Cookies is about as comprehensive a cookie cookbook as I've come across. Recipes are well-organized into drop cookies, bars and squares, shortbread and rolled cookies. There are entire chapters dedicated to chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies and brownies. My three favorite food groups.

As far as Christmas-type cookies go, the Molasses Oat Cookies, Snowflake Cookies, Ginger Shortbread and Pumpkin Spice Cookies look like possible candidates to join our holiday line-up, though I'm not entirely sold on the idea of Eggnog Brownies. But maybe.

I'm looking forward to testing Linda's Favorite Sugar Cookie, described as tender and not too sweet.

The best part about this ritual? Giving the goodies away to friends and family.

Favorite Sugar Cookie

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 1/4 granulated sugar

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Additional granulated sugar

Instructions

1. In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and cream of tartar until well combined. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, cream butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add egg and beat well. Beat in vanilla. Scrap down the sides of the bowl. On low speed or using a wooden spoon, gradually add flour mixture, beating until well blended. Cover dough with plastic wrap and chill for at least an hour.

3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease hands with nonstick cooking spray. Roll pieces into 1-inch balls. Roll balls in granulated sugar. Place about 2 inches apart on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until edges start to turn lightly golden.

4. Immediately slide parchment paper onto a wire cooling rack. Cool cookies for 5 minutes, then transfer from the paper to the rack and cool completely.

Yield: About 4 1/2 dozen cookies.

-- Leslie Kelly

Comments

[Kevin Kim on December 04, 2009 at 01:43 PM]

For the granulated sugar, that's 1.25 CUPS, yes?

Sounds like a great, simple recipe. Thank you.

[Sherry on December 04, 2009 at 01:46 PM]

Glen Bridget is so cute. Thanks for the recipe! Merry Christmas!

[Sherry on December 04, 2009 at 01:49 PM]

Oops I believe I should have said Claire. Again Merry Christmas!

[Rex on December 04, 2009 at 02:58 PM]

Wait, you're recommending a recipe you haven't tried yourself?

[Robin on December 05, 2009 at 05:11 AM]

I've tried a couple of these not-to-sweet sugar cookies and reached a couple of conclusions: 1. They're sugar cookies. They're supposed to be plenty sweet. 2. When they're not too sweet, they're unpleasantly eggy. 3. Tender really means mushy. They're supposed to be crispy.

Of course I haven't compared this recipe to those because I didn't keep the bad ones, but the bad ones do always come with that same not-to-sweet moniker, which makes me wary.

[Jamie on December 05, 2009 at 06:24 AM]

I don't know about sugar cookies having to be crispy... My favorite sugar cookies EVAH were from my grandmother's recipe: cut with a big scalloped-edged cutter so that they were almost as big as my face (I was pretty little!), rather thick, soft to bite into, floury, the dough itself certainly sweet but not half as sweet as, say, the rum balls I also make every year from her recipe. They were sprinkled with sugar, sometimes plain, sometimes colored. MMmmm.....

And now, though that recipe is one my grandma unfortunately took with her to her eternal reward (I'm WAITING, Grandma!), my own children really like those supermarket sugar cookies with the often pink (or seasonally-colored) frosting on them - again, thick, soft, floury, not very sweet except for the frosting. It's with not insignificant sadness that I watch them eat those cookies... because they're a travesty compared to my grandmother's, and the frosting? Yuck! But I'm still looking for a similar recipe.

OTOH, my neighbor (daughter of a baker) makes the most delicious *crispy* sugar cookies I've ever had: always the first to go at neighborhood events, even when there are "seven-layer triple-chocolate caramel truffle turtle brownies" (or gross reasonable facsimile thereof) to be had.

So I'm saying, it's a matter of opinion.