My Madison Bistro

If there was only one holiday sweet to show up at our family Christmas, it would be my mom’s cut-out sugar cookies. But luckily, we’ve never had to resort to that.

I generally make candy at Christmas, though after trying the chocolate peppermint cookies this weekend, my mom announced that these are now a Christmas-must in my family. Fine with me, I love them!!!

But to change things up a little from my peppermint/chocolate holiday theme, I wanted to do some decorated cut-outs as well. Because I’d already posted my mom’s recipe earlier in the year, I decided to do something a little different and returned to a recipe that I love but hadn’t made since college. That was the only time I made them, simply because I couldn’t control stop myself from eating them!

These days, I do better around sweets, so I figured if there was a time to make them again, this was it.

All I know about the origin of this recipe is that I swiped the card from my mom’s recipe box. The rest of my family preferred the regular recipe, so I held on to this one. While it’s similar to recipes I found in an Internet search, it’s not identical to any of them.

If you’re hesitant to deal with the rolling of the dough, cutting the cookies, etc, this could be a good recipe to start with. I find this dough easy to work with, and shaping the dough into several disks before refrigerating it will really assist you in rolling it out. If you have a teeny-tiny kitchen like I do (with virtually no counter space), simply flour a sheet of parchment, and roll the dough out on that; it really does work well.

For icing the cookies, I used a combination of melted confectioner’s coating and buttercream frosting. I’ve included my buttercream recipe below – it’s delicious, but not the best cookie frosting out there.

Sour Cream Cut-Out Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup sour cream
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Sift flour, baking powder, and baking soda into a large bowl. Set aside.

Cream butter, salt, and sugar on low speed (using paddle attachment with a stand mixer) until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla, mix well, scraping down the bowl as necessary. Add sour cream and mix to combine.

Slowly add flour to butter mixture on low speed just combined, scraping down the bowl several times to ensure all of the flour is mixed in.

Divide dough into 6 balls. Spread each ball into a disk on plastic wrap; wrap tightly and refrigerate overnight, or up to two days.

Preheat oven to 375*F.

Roll each disk to 1/8 inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes and transfer to parchment-lined baking sheets.

Bake 8-10 minutes. Cool on pan 10 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

Frost and decorate as desired. Store cookies in cool area (I refrigerate or freeze mine).

Buttercream Frosting*

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter (cold)
1 3/4 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Cut butter into 8 pieces. With paddle attachment, mix on low until smooth. Slowly add confectioners’ sugar, scraping down the bowl as needed, until well mixed. Add vanilla, beat to combine. Increase speed to medium for a minute to ensure even blending.

Tint frosting as desired, and frost cookies.

*This recipe does not include enough frosting for this batch of cookies. To use buttercream for the entire batch, double or triple the frosting recipe, depending on how many different colors you want to use and how thick you like to pile it on.

****************************************

And finally, I had to post this picture because it makes me laugh. I had to adjust the exposure a LOT so you could see the background, so don’t pay attention to the cookies. This was the first picture I took, and as I was waiting for the camera to take the picture, my cat decided to investigate. She was able to get her paws up on the edge of the table and peek at what was on it.

Tags: cookies, frosting

Trackback URI | Comments RSS