Tried and True: Sugar Cookies

While my family is all about pie, I am a cookie and cake sort of gal.   A few years ago I determined that homemade is really and truly the best tasting.  To that end I've been trying to build a file of recipes for cookies that I enjoy making and eating.  In my very young married years, I often made dozens of cookies each Christmas, but I seldom made them at any other time because they weren't my favorites.

John convinced me years ago to forgo the annual cookie bake.  Over the years I've pretty much stuck to a very few recipes for day to day use: chocolate chip, oatmeal, peanut butter.  At Christmas I make sugar cookies, magic cookie bars, stove top cookies and chocolate chip.  I've never been happy with my sugar cookie recipe, though I've used it for years upon years.  This past Spring I found a new to me recipe, which I wrote down.



This is the recipe I made this morning.  I halved the recipe because I was unsure if I'd like it or not.  It's a pretty good cookie, sort of crisp but not hard.  It's a very soft dough.  I did not chill before forming into balls since the recipe didn't call for it.  It worked up pretty well, wasn't overly sticky despite being soft. I found rolling the cookie dough ball in sugar and then pressing with a cut glass dish to impress a design on the cookie worked better than the suggested method in the recipe.  I'd like to have had some coarse sugar on hand.  The sugar I buy at Aldi is very fine stuff.

I don't know where I got the recipe, if it was one of the vintage magazines or online.  I didn't notate that when I copied it out several months ago.

Sugar Cookies

1 cup butter

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup sugar

1 cup confectioners sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cream of tartar

Additional sugar for topping

Mix butter, oil and sugars.  (I whipped until light), then add eggs and vanilla.  Mix flour and leavening and then add to the wet mixture.  Preheat oven to 350F.  Roll dough into 1 inch balls, and place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet.  (I used parchment lined sheets).  Moisten bottom of glass with water then dip in sugar and use to press cookies flat. (I rolled in sugar and flattened with a pretty cut glass dish).  Bake 10-12 minutes until just brown around edges.  Cool on rack. Makes 11 dozen cookies.

This is the FULL recipe.  I halved the ingredients (except vanilla) and the recipe made about 4 dozen.  My cookies were a wee bit larger than 1 inch when I rolled them into balls.  

I like this recipe a lot, more than my old recipe, and John likes it very well, too.  He's helped himself to cookies without any push on my part, a sure sign that he likes it.  I'll definitely keep this recipe for future cookie making.