The kids loved when we made sugar cookies for Valentine’s Day, and have been begging me to do it again. It seemed like a good day for a time-consuming project; I needed some distraction but I wanted to spend time with them, and that fulfilled both needs with one buttery, sugary task. Why not.
Since the weather was so gorgeous today, I sent them outside for a bit while I got the cookie dough made. I knew we’d need a lot of time to make the cookies, and I didn’t want them missing out on this bizarre April summer we’re having.
While they were outside, I assembled the ingredients. This isn’t just for a photo; if you’ve ever been halfway through a recipe and suddenly discovered you’re missing a vital ingredient, you know why it’s good to pull everything out first. I just put it back as I go. If I were on a cooking show, someone else would put it all away during the commercials, but I’m on my own.
This is not the kind of recipe you use if you’re counting calories or watching your sugar intake. I don’t use whole wheat white for this one, or substitute anything for butter; sugar cookies are sugar cookies. Honestly, after a year on Weight Watchers it’s hard not to recoil from such a sight, but then I remember what it is I’m making and it all makes sense. No yogurt loaf this! It’s about buttery sweetness, and how good it makes you feel when you bite into it.
Look at that butter. Oy! And sugar! I beat them into submission, then added the eggs & vanilla.
Next up, dry ingredients. I had forgotten just how much volume this recipe makes. 5 1/2 cups of flour. The insanity!
And then I just mixed everything together, bit by bit, until it became too intense for the stand mixer and I had to finish by hand.
I got the cookie cutters & the rolling pin ready for the chaos that was about to ensue.
Oh, and the scraper! I love that thing. I used to see them on tv all the time and then my friend Marcie picked one up for me at Sur La Table. It makes it SO much easier to clean sticky dough from the counter, and it makes me feel like a real chef, at least until I start trying to actually make something.
Once I had everything ready, I called the kids in.
After that, there was just unbearable cuteness for a while, along with a ton of flour poofing everywhere, frequent admonishing to keep hands out of mouths, and a lot of shape-making.
We did hearts, stars, bears, trains, rectangles, circles, and maple leaves in honor of my homeland.
The cookies just started piling up. And up. And up.
Once they’d cooled, I cleaned up all the flour & sticky dough bits and sent the kids off to play while I whipped up the frosting. More sugar, more butter. Bring it on.
I asked them what colors they wanted, planning to split it in half, but they both asked for pink and neither one was interested in a second color. They just wanted to start decorating.
Here are Nathaniel’s:
And Juliet’s:
And mine:
And Juliet stuck around for the long haul, so I let her decorate the last ones I’d been frosting.
Behold the results:
We left a bunch unfrosted, in the end…we ran out of energy for it and the cookies had 800 pounds of sugar in them already.
The kitchen looks crazy, we have an abundance of cookies and nowhere to put them, and we just stocked up on groceries, so it’s basically a madhouse at the moment, truly worthy of its occupants.
And the cookies? If you love soft, pillowy sugar cookies that still taste fantastic days later, this is the winning recipe. Follow her advice to the letter and you will bask in deliciousness. Promise.
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