Spreading the Festive Spirit.

Rolled sugar cookies have honestly always scared me a little. (Okay, who am I kidding? They scared the hell out me.)

You see, while I had lofty dreams of baking batch after batch of perfectly shaped sugar cookies before decorating each tiny blank canvas like I was the Piscasso of cookie decorating, my reality was quite nothing like it.

After painstakingly chilling the dough, gingerly cutting out each cookie with a little cookie cutter then freezing said cut out cookies, I would, to much disappointment, pull out tray after tray of misshaped cookies out of the oven. (And that’s just the baking. Don’t get me starting on my dismal decorating skills.)

So I quickly wisened up, learnt to avoid cookies of any sort that required rolling and cutting and stuck with cookies I knew and loved.

But this Christmas, that all changed.

Perhaps swayed by false bravado that only the festive season can muster (and armed with a cookie book that has sitting by my bedside table for far too long),  I got it in my head there was no time like the present to conquer my troubles with the sugar cookies.

And nothing like a little added incentive to make it work, by way of my two adorable little cousins whom I had over for an afternoon of cookie decorating and cartoons.

Thankfully, there were no misshapen cookies in sight when I pulled my first tray of cookies out of the oven. In fact, much to my amazement and delight, tray after tray of baked cookies kept their shapes all reasonably well.

With an array of sprinkles and some maple buttercream, the girls went crazy decorating their cookies, making sure of course to taste each and every type of sprinkle and occasionally announce their grand design plan to the boyfriend and I.

The cookies and buttercream were quite a hit with the kids. The seven year old, who took it upon herself to swipe a generous dap of buttercream on a broken gingerbread men and load it up with sprinkles for taste testing, proclaimed it to be very good while the little four year old couldn’t resist licking the spatula each time (read: very often) she used it to swirl the sprinkles into the buttercream.

And the kids were not the only fans these cookies had.

Buttery and crisp, these sugar cookies had the boyfriend, myself and my dad all enamoured- with my dad even asking if there were any left long after the little ones left for home with their little boxes of decorated cookies in tow.

(There were. And in case you’re wondering, the seven cookies on the left- yup, the ones with the sprinkles overload- were the work of the four year old while other six cookies were by her seven year old sister.)

But seriously, a cookie that keeps its shape in the oven and is much loved by both adults and kids? I can’t ask for anything more this Christmas.

Rolled Sugar Cookies with Maple Buttercream [Cookie recipe from Valerie Peterson and Janice Fryer's Cookie Craft]

Notes: These cookies really were a breeze to work with. I made the dough two days before I cut the cookie shapes out and baked them so they didn’t feel like too much work all at once, as sugar cookies tend to feel. Also, I tried the royal icing recipe from the same book and it had a really weird taste to it, even with a generous amount of maple syrup added to it (I didn’t want to add vanilla extract because I make my own and it’s vodka-based.). So I threw it out and whipped up some buttercream flavoured with maple syrup. Can I- while I’m getting it all out here- also just say how happy I am to finally have found a sugar cookie recipe that yields cookies that don’t spread in the kitchen? I think I feel a cookie cutter obsession coming on!

Ingredients
Cookies
3 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
250g unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg, at room temperature
2 tsp vanilla extract

Maple buttercream
250g unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup icing sugar
3 tbsp milk
3 tsp maple syrup

1. To make cookies Whisk the flour and salt together and set aside.
2. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until well combined.
3. Fold the flour into the butter mixture in two batches until just combined.
4. Turn the dough out onto the countertop and divide the dough into two equal portion. Roll each portion out to about 1/4-inch thick between two sheets of baking paper. Chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least an hour or till the dough firms up.
5. Preheat the oven to 175C. Line two baking trays with baking paper and set aside.
6. Working with one sheet of dough at a time, cut the cookie dough with cookie cutters into desired shapes and place the cookies onto the prepared baking trays about  1-inch apart. Try to place cookies that are of similar sizes onto the same tray so that they will all be done baking at the same time.
7. Chill the cookies for about ten minutes before baking them in the centre of the oven until the edges of the cookies turn golden brown.
8. Let the cookies cool on the baking trays for about ten minutes before moving them to a wire rack to cool completely.
9. To make maple buttercream Using an electric mixer, cream the butter till light and fluffy. Sift the icing sugar over the butter mixture and mix till well incorporated.
10. Add the milk and maple syrup, mixing well. Taste the buttercream and adjust for your desired consistency and sweetness of the buttercream with the icing sugar, milk and maple syrup (add more icing sugar for a thicker and sweeter buttercream; more milk for a thinner and less sweet buttercream and more maple syrup for a thinner and sweeter buttercream).
11. Stir in any food colouring, if desired, and refrigerate the frosting until ready to use. Makes and frosts about 16 medium-sized cookies

Posted by thecoffeesnob on December 14, 2011

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