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Sugar cookies can be made with a simple base of eggs, flour, baking powder, and butter, sweetened with sugar. The ratio of ingredients is important for a buttery flavor, and some add vanilla, cinnamon, or almond extract. The dough can be scooped or rolled out with cookie cutters for unique shapes. Cream cheese can be substituted for flour for a creamy taste, and citrus peels can add a twist. Decorating with frosting or other edible decorations is optional.
Sugarpaste can be bought at the store or easily made at home from scratch with basic pantry items. Eggs, enriched flour, baking powder and butter form the simple base of sugar paste – sweetened to taste, of course, with sugar of the same name. Many shape the end products into holiday-themed cookies. Others prefer to drop them in messy clumps on the baking sheet and devour them without decoration as soon as they cool.
When blended and baked with precision, sugar cookies will have a distinctive buttery flavor. The ratio of ingredients is key. For every 2.5 cups (591 mL) of flour, approximately 0.33 cups (158 mg) of sugar are needed, along with two egg yolks, 0.5 teaspoon (2.5 mL) of baking powder, and 1 cup (about 250 mg) of butter. Many cooks add about 1 teaspoon (5 mL) of vanilla, cinnamon, almond extract, and salt to this mix.
Flour and baking powder are mixed first. Then the butter and sugar are whipped until the mixture is completely whipped and foamy. The yolks and flavorings go into the butter last. The last step is to slowly beat the flour into the buttery yolks – with a blender or by hand – until the dough is malleable.
Some cooks scoop the dough onto greased cookie sheets and simply bake them at about 350°F (about 175°C) for no more than 10 minutes, perhaps with some brown sugar sprinkled on top. Many others, however, roll out the fondant with a roller on a floured counter, into pencil-thin sheets. Hence, cookie cutters are used to give cookies unique shapes such as Christmas stars or bells. Some even rotate their cookie sheets halfway through baking, to give the final cookies textural uniformity.
A variation of the traditional sugar cookie dough replaces the cream cheese with flour, giving the cut-out sugar cookies a more definitive shape and a distinctly creamy taste. With the original recipe, the chefs avoid the temptation to incorporate the butter directly into the sugar and egg yolks. Butter needs to be properly softened to give it the right texture and flavor. Citrus peels other than orange or lemon peels can give a sugar paste with a twist, and many decorate the tops with frosting or other edible decorations to add visual interest. Anything more than this, however, is considered by many to be excessive, marring the intended simplicity of the sugar cookie.
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