Sugar Cookies

As previously mentioned, it is an avid ambition of mine to fully perfect a recipe to call my own. There is no greater achievement than to have someone take a bite and say with utter awe and amazement, "Where did you get these? They're amazing!" followed by the smug satisfaction of proclaiming, "I made them myself," and blush modestly as they further compliment the sugary success. (This is, of course, ignoring the fact that their wonder means they would have had little faith in my skill to begin with. In all honesty, considering my previous non-successes with some self-altered recipes, I wouldn't blame them.)

Recently, and entirely by chance, it seems that my destined product of perfection is far from the Perfect Brownie I'd hoped for (there was a last trial unworthy of publishing), but rather, the humble sugar cookie. I'm far from unhappy, however. Sugar cookies are not only more impressive when decorated, and though much more time-consuming, can be sculpted more creatively with its presentation compared to the very generic square slab known as a slice of brownie.

I began with the basic sugar cookie recipe. After scouring several online, I came to the conclusion that the most generic, average sugar cookie was comprised of the following ingredients:

225g butter, softened
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 egg
2 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder

using the typical method of creaming the butter and sugar, beating in the egg, and sifting in dry ingredients, baking at 190 C for about 8-10 minutes.

Batch one. Cookies spread on baking and frosting was too liquid

However, I found several issues with this:
1.) The cookies spread while baking, resulting in deformed hearts, and stars that appeared more like palm tree leaves.
2.) They had a bitter after-taste, due to the baking soda.

A bit less of an issue was the sweetness of the cookies: they were good to begin with, but post-frosting became slightly too sweet.

However, I quickly concluded to several alterations thanks to my self-study of this article written by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, in which he tested 100 different methods and ingredients and its effects on a chocolate chip cookie. In his article, he records the several-week experimenting and produced in over 1,500 cookies.

While I haven't anywhere near the patience of that legend, the best I could do was read his research and take it to heart. Several improvements were made. If one cannot be bothered reading the article, my alterations were based on the following conclusions:

1.) Bake cookies at a lower temperature to prevent spreading. A different site claims it's imperative to bake when dough is cold, so I did.
2.) Baking soda, comprised only of a base, requires an acid to react with. Normally, this comes from brown sugar, but sugar cookies only call for white. Thus: omit baking soda.

Some time later, I had made a double-batch of cookies that was perfection in my eyes. They were golden and smooth like a mass-produced cookie, held its shape, and remained crisp over the few days they lasted, despite packing them in lunch-boxes with bread. It was gone within five days, and difficult to stop eating. The recipe is as follows:

Sugar Cookies

225g butter, softened
1 cup sugar **
1 1/2 eggs
2 3/4 cup standard flour
1 tsp baking powder

Method:

1. Cream butter and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy.
2. Beat in eggs until smooth.
3. Gradually add in flour, mixing on very low, until it clumps too much, then knead with hands. Mixture will look crumbly, and may not stick together. Do not panic. As long as the flour is combined with the butter, you're good to go.
4. Chill your dough either overnight or for a couple of hours. Make sure it's cold and solid.
5. Preheat oven to 160-190 C. **
6. Knead dough again as the dough will still be crumbly. Some force will have it come together in a dough. It may take several minutes.
7. Roll into balls and flatten, or roll out onto floured surface, cut with cookie cutters, and bake. **
8. Cool before frosting.

** Read tips

Tips:

Several things I learned between from experience and research into others' recipes and suggestions.

• This recipe is very flexible, as shown by the following.
• 1 1/2 eggs make things very complicated. If you plan on making only one batch and cannot be bothered splitting half an egg, use one egg. Too much egg, as I've discovered, makes the dough sticky, making it hard to roll and shape. If making three batches, use 4 eggs, etc.
• 1 cup self-raising flour = 1 cup standard flour + 1tsp baking powder. Substitute away.
• Bread flour and standard flour are interchangeable here. Substitute away.
• The dough must be cold to begin with. Warm dough will spread in the oven.
• Temperature is irrelevant. It can be anywhere between 160-190 C, as timing much depends on your colour preference of the cookies. Lower temperatures = longer but more even browning.
• Timing will depend on colour preference of the cookies as well as the sizing, spacing, baking temperature, and functionality of oven and may take between 8-15 minutes.
• Higher heat may result in a slight spreading of cookies.
• If cookie shapes have appendages, like that of stars, higher heat may cause darkening of points faster than torso.
• If you do not plan on frosting cookies, add about 1/4 cup more sugar.

I'm aware some of that is common sense but it's something I had to learn through trial. My ignorance astounds a lot of people.

3 batches of cookies. Sister's cookie stacking skillz

Ignore burnt, neglected cookies

Frosting

Things I have learned from frosting:

1. Royal frosting is not necessary for sugar cookies
2. 1 cup of icing sugar can use between 1 1/2 - 3 tablespoons of liquid. This can depend on brand of icing sugar, or age. I found that older icing sugar needs less liquid to become runny.
3. Liquids can be water, milk, cream, half-and-half. Lemon juice gives it a great hint of flavour.
4. Who needs piping bags when sandwich bags with tips cut off work fine.

Final batch(es): Ignore my finger in the corner. Also, ignore spewing cookie.