I don’t know about y’all, but I’m constantly searching for recipes on Pinterest. I’m not the most prepared person, so the following recipe was a little difficult to make. I had many mistrials throughout my baking, but in the end, my cookies turned out delicious. Enjoy!
My little Pinterest tale began a week before Christmas when my granny asked me what kind of cookies she should order for Christmas Eve. That’s all it took and my mind when straight to a sugar cookie recipe I pinned a couple of weeks ago, so I volunteered by baking services. I later came to regret that impulsive pin attack, but hey, it happens.
After I declared I would be making cookies for Christmas Eve I reviewed the recipe and concluded that it would be simple and easy. So, naturally, I would put off making my cookies until the very last minute…for the sake of freshness, of course. The morning before Christmas Eve I ran to Wal-Mart and picked up all of my ingredients. Also, I didn’t have a wire cooling rack, but I remedied that because a previous Pinterest adventure taught me you couldn’t cut that corner. I brought home my purchases then naturally took a nap and wasted my day. It was Christmas vacation, get off my back.
So, two hours before heading to the bar for a little dancing and imbibing of the sprits I totally wasn’t feeling these cookies (my Christmas cheer was in short supply). So, like the Grinch, my heart was two sizes too small when I began baking my Christmas cookies, but I combined all my ingredients with no trouble and came to my first of many problems: I don’t own a rolling pin. I did what any other poor college gal would do: I improvised by smoothing my dough out with a flexible cutting board. However I then realized I was out of parchment paper. Because wax paper isn’t a suitable substitute for parchment paper (unless you enjoy a smoky apartment) I had to make my second trip to the store. Upon my return I began the annoying process of using a cookie cutter to make cute little trees and placing them on my parchment paper-lined cookie sheets and re-mushing my leftover dough while my dear roommate reminded me that we needed to leave for the bar soon and I still had flour in my hair. I ended up throwing away a blob of dough because I refused to flatten out the dough another time.
My first batch of cookies looked beautiful! However, they didn’t taste as amazing as they looked, which resulted in me cursing under my breath. I continued on with hopes that the icing would cover up the terrible taste. The rest of my baking experience was riddled with problems: I almost burnt down the apartment after dropping a potholder on the oven heating element, I accidentally turned off the oven and “cooked” two batches with no heat before noticing, and I even dropped a couple cookies on our filthy floor. Many more curse words were uttered. After returning from the bar I stored my unfrosted trees into containers and tried to quickly clean up the flour explosion because the roommate had a late night visitor from the bar. We artfully made it look like we had been baking yummy things, but not in a messy manner. I’m sure he noticed and thought “these girls sure are cool” until he saw the shake weight in our living room that we forgot to hide.
In the early morning, slightly hung over, I underwent the decorating process of the cookies which happened to taste much better than they did the night before. The icing was fairly easy to make, even though I didn’t have quite enough powdered sugar. I think I used like half of my food coloring just making the dang stuff a decent color of green. I slathered it on the cookies and used the various sprinkles I had to add a little pizzazz. As I sprinkled my last cookie I waved goodbye to my roommates boy toy as he exited our apartment and sighed a sigh of relieve that these dang cookies were finished.
The verdict: these cookies were a pain in my ass. Most of the trouble was of my own making, so I wouldn’t try to dissuade anyone wanting to try this recipe. They ended up tasting pretty dang good by the time I served them Christmas Eve so definitely make a day in advance. Would I make them again? No, they have bad juju with me, but I will gladly give the recipe to my mom and ask her to make them for me.
Here’s the recipe, as well as a link to the blog it came from:
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
3 tsp. vanilla
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking soda
5 1/2 cups flour
In mixer, cream butter and sugar, and then add eggs and vanilla. Add sour cream. Combine salt, soda, and flour, and add to mixture.
Roll out on floured surface to about 1/4 to 1/3 inch thick.
Use a spatula to carefully slide under each cookie and place onto greased (with Pam) parchment-lined cookie sheets. Bake at 375 for 7-8 minutes.
THEY WILL NOT LOOK DONE!
Wait about 5 minutes and then transfer carefully to a cooling rack. If you wait longer they will get soggy on the bottom and sometimes get stuck to the parchment paper.
Buttercream Frosting:
1/2 cup butter, softened
4 cups powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4-1/3 cup milk
In a mixing bowl, cream butter. Beat in sugar and vanilla until crumbly. Gradually add milk until frosting reaches desired consistency. Add desired food coloring.
http://peppermintplum.blogspot.com/2011/03/thick-soft-sugar-cookies.html