Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without these wonderful sugar cookies. My mom made them a lot when I was growing up, the recipe is wonderful! They make a super soft, sweet cookie. They do take a little time, and the dough is easiest to work with if it has been refrigerated for about an hour. The buttercream frosting recipe is from my magnificent cake making friend Melanie. It works great if you want to use cake decorating tools to pipe the frosting on and make them look fancy. It also tastes like heaven. Who doesn’t want a bite of heaven!?
Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
COOKIES:
1 C butter
2 C sugar
2 eggs
1 C sour cream
1 t vanilla
1/2 t baking soda
4 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
4 1/2 C flour
dash nutmeg (just a sprinkle, folks
BUTTERCREAM FROSTING:
1/2 C butter
1/2 C Crisco (butter flavor)
3 1/2 - 4 C powdered sugar
1 t vanilla
2-3 T milk
Instructions
COOKIES:
1. Mix the butter, eggs, and sugar together for about 2 minutes. Add the sour cream and mix for another minute. Add the vanilla and mix.
2. Add the dry ingredients and mix just until incorporated.
3. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
4. So here is the trick! Spray the top of your counter with cooking spray. Then dust it with a bit of flour. Take 1/3 of the cold dough and pat it all over with flour. Not too heavily, the trick is to get just enough flour so the dough won't stick to the counter, but you don't want the dough to become too dried out, so take it easy on the flour.
5. Dust a rolling pin with flour and roll the dough out. It should be at least 1/4 thick. Sometimes I do mine just a bit thicker than that.
6. Cut dough into shapes with seasonal cookie cutters. If you slide the cookie cutter around in the flour a bit before you press it into the dough it should make a nice clean cut that will come out of the cutter really well.
7. Place the cut out cookie on a greased cookie sheet.
8. Once you have cut all the shapes you can fit on the spread out dough, take a spatula and scrape the dough off your counter. You don't want any leftover dough stuck down, this will make it super hard to roll the next batch out. Make sure the counter is dough free before you start rolling again.
9. Keep rolling the dough and cutting it into shapes until all your dough is used up.
10. Bake at 350 for 7 minutes. I really suggest under cooking these. Take them out when they are just starting to get golden around the edges of the cookie, then let them finish cooking while they rest on the hot cookie sheet.
BUTTERCREAM FROSTING:
1. Beat the butter and Crisco together in your mixer, or use a handheld electric one. Add the vanilla and mix.
2. Add the powdered sugar a little at a time, adding the milk bit by bit until you have the desired consistency. What in the world is the desired consistency, you might be thinking?...let me tell you. Dab your finger into the frosting, if it sticks just a bit you are good to go. If it won't stick at all you need more milk. If it is smearing its gooey self all over your finger, you need more powdered sugar.
3. Once your desired consistency is fabulous, let it mix for about 2-3 minutes. This makes the frosting super smooth and....like I said....it tastes like a piece of heaven!
4. After cookies have cooled, decorate as desired.
Recipe from www.jamiecooksitup.net
Recipe from my dear Mother
I'm sitting here, looking at your blog and my 3 yr old is like “mom, mom, I love those cookies!! I want that recipe” etc. So funny! You won her over for sure!!
Popping in from SITS!
Welcome…
Oh, I love Sugar Cookies! I can't wait to try to make these. I've never made them from scratch before, I always get the pre made cookie dough. I know…
Now following your blog.
They look delicious!
Hi! Stopping in from SITS! Love the blog 🙂 Those sugar cookies look and sound amazing. I'm going to have to try those recipes out for Christmas cookie cutouts!
Stopping by from SITS! Now I'm hungry. Thanks for sharing your recipes!
Hi, Deb. I plugged the ieegrdinnts into a nutrition website, nutritiondata.com, for the blondies without the frosting when cut into 9 servings and posted it here: .It’s only a rough estimate because I couldn’t enter the ieegrdinnts exactly but I would guess that it’s pretty close.
Where can I buy your cook book, seriously this could be a new venture and make money for your talent.
These look amazing! But one question…I live in Spain and we do not have shortening here. Only pig leaf lard, which is much softer and does not at all have the same consistency as shortening. But your recipe looks amazing…so my question is…do you think I could use all butter for the frosting?
Melissa,
So nice to hear from someone so far away! You can most definitely use all butter for the frosting. The only down side is…it won't stand up well if you were planning to pipe it through a decorating bag. However, that said…it will taste divine. Just spread it on the cookies with a knife and you will be all set. Good luck! Hope you love them.
~Jamie
Is that 4 1/2 cups flour?
Jalisa,
Yep, 4 1/4 C. Thanks for letting me know the C was missing. Have a good one!
~Jamie
I’ve made these before and I LOVE them! Don’t have a lot of time this Christmas season, so I’m thinking of making them ahead of time (sans frosting) then freezing them to decorate later. Have you done it before? And does it work? 🙂
Anjie,
These freeze really well. Great idea to make them one day, freeze them and then frost them another day. Have fun!
~Jamie
I made this dough and it is SO STICKY I can barely touch it without it coating my hands in a thick layer of sticky dough!! Did I make the dough wrong? I flour the counter but then it just turns back to its original unbeatable stickiness in a few seconds. I managed to make a few cookies but only after adding almost 1/4 cup flour to 1 1/2 cup dough….is that how it’s supposed to be like? I don’t normally make cut out cookie dough, I’ve only dabbled in drop cookie dough….