Cookie Making!

I love making cookies. I am not a great "cook" but do not mess with me in the cookie department. I have many wonderful memories of cookie baking with my Mom. She always says that making cookies is the best thing to do on a rainy day. It was pouring outside so the idea seemed to fit perfectly! Last week while the kids were in town we had a great time cutting, decorating, and eating.

Their beautiful creations!

Cali was a pro, and Carter wanted specific instructions on when to push and when to pull the cookie cutter up.



The dough I made wasn't the greatest, so I began searching the WWW for something a little better. I found the recipe below and made these cookies this week for some friends and family. Pull this recipe out sometime when it's rainy! These are so good you won't regret it!

Awesome Sugar Cookie Recipe

• 1 cup (2 sticks) of softened butter
• 1-1/2 cups of sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• 4 cups of flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1 cup of sour cream (I used vanilla greek yogurt instead of sour cream)
  

Cream the butter and the sugar together, making sure to combine it well. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix it a little more. Add all of the dry ingredients (the flour, baking soda, and salt) and mix it again.. Then add the sour cream. Mix it one more time. The dough should have a firm quality and still be soft. (Be sure that you taste test it—taste testing sugar cookie dough is never a bad idea!) If the dough is too sticky, be sure to add more flour. If you do need to add more flour, make sure that you add it gradually—you don't want the dough to be too dry either!

Once the dough consistency is to your liking, put it in the fridge and let it chill for at least an hour. Once the dough is sufficiently chilled (you will know if it is chilled enough if it is stiff and kind of hard to manipulate). Take some dough and roll is out so it is between a quarter and a half of an inch thick. Then take whatever cookie cutters you want and cut the cookies out. If you are making Halloween cookies, use pumpkin cookie cutters; if you are making St. Patrick's Day cookies, use shamrock cookie cutters; if you are making cookies for Valentine's Day, use heart-shaped cutters; you get the idea!

When you have filled up a tray of cut out cookie dough (you should have about a dozen cookies per cookie sheet), bake them in an oven preheated to 375 degrees for nine to ten minutes. The cookies should be barely, barely, hardly even brown on the very, very bottom of the cookies. These cookies will not be good at all if they are overbaked. Don't leave these cookies out overnight uncovered, or else they will get hard and they won't be any good at all. What makes these cookies good is their soft, fluffy quality. If these sugar cookies are hard, they won't satisfy any sweet tooth at all.