Chewy Sugar Cookies
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Christmas seems to get more and more hectic each year when you have a family. Shopping, decorating, lists, baking, Christmas cards, wrapping, watching your budget, crafting, and all of the other little things we do to make the season special for our families.
While our kids and spouses get to sit back and enjoy the season, we rush and run around to create more magic, more, More..MORE!! ~laughs~ It gets a little harried, but I have one thing I do that I look forward to every year. Each year around this time, I start cookbook shopping. Not an ordinary book, but a big old thick cookbook with a nice hardback cover that I can really curl up with.
I really enjoy looking over my different options, reading reviews, pondering the pros of this one or that…and then I finally make my decision. I always order it by mail (Usually Amazon.com) so that it arrives sealed up in a box. Here is the important part: I do not open that box! I wrap it the day it comes in and place it beneath the tree with my name on it.
The remaining weeks are spent with me casting longing glances beneath the tree and looking forward to Christmas morning where I unwrap my prize and spend the better part of that day curled up in the recliner leisurely flipping through pages, enjoying my new toy as my kids enjoy theirs.
For two of the past few years, those books have been from King Arthur Flour. I love cookbooks, but it takes a lot for me to get really excited over one. There are four cookbooks in print right now that I trust completely. I own two King Arthur Flour cookbooks, so they hold two of those places!
You know how you see a new recipe, want to take it to an event, but feel you need to “try it out” first to make sure it tastes good? My favorite cookbooks are the ones which I trust completely, they require no trials or testing. You can choose a recipe and make it for the very first time to take to a grand event and know it will be perfect and loved by all. That’s how King Arthur recipes are.
The two King Arthur books I have (and love) are The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion: The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook and the The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion: The Essential Cookie Cookbook. Ready for the exciting news?
This cookbook is the essential guide on cookies. Just for sugar cookies alone there are 15 recipes and at least as many for our beloved chocolate chip! Each recipe features an introduction which describes the cookie texture and flavor..allowing you to choose exactly the type you are looking for with ease and confidence.
I still haven’t chosen my cookbook for this year. I need to pay another visit to King Arthur Flour’s site…
Now on to these delicious cookies…
My son has always loved the sugar cookies they sell in the malls. He calls them “sprinkle cookies” because they are covered in colorful sprinkles. I made these for the first time a few years back and he was elated when he came home from school. He actually thought I had been to the mall just to buy him cookies! They taste so wonderful and really beg to be dunked into a glass of milk. These are classic Santa cookies! You won’t believe the texture. When you pick them up, they feel like a regular cookie, but biting in reveals a tender chewiness unlike any other.
Ingredients
- 3/4 Cup unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks)
- 3/4 cups granulated sugar
- 1/2 Cup brown sugar
- 1/4 Cup light corn syrup
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg or 1/4 tsp lemon oil optional, your choice - I left both of these out
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 large egg
- 2 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
- 1/4 cup coarse or granulated sugar for decorating
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) two baking sheets. In a large mixing bowl, beat together butter, granulated and brown sugars, corn syurup, vanilla, nutmeg, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and egg. Stir in flour.
- Place coarse sugar in shallow dish. Drop dough by tablespoonfull (a tablespoon cookie scoop works well here) into sugar, rolling the balls to coat them. Place on prepared baking sheets. (We just dig out hands in the dough, grab a bit, and roll it up in a ball - I've never owned a cookie scoop!)
- Bake cookies for ten minutes until the edges are just barely beginning to brown, they'll look soft. If you bake these cookies too long, they'll be crunch rather than chewy. Remove from oven and cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to rack to cool completely.
Nutrition
My favorite memory is baking and decorating sugar cookies with my Mother.Waking up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning and just staring in amazement at all the presents. Those were truly happy times and memories that I will treasure always.
My favorite christmas memory is when my parents bought me my first bike. I was so excited and I put hundreds of miles on it. It was yellow with a little plastic basket and long pink strings that hung down from the handlebars. I can’t wait to make those memories for my little boy.
My favorite Christmas memory (that I did not even catch on to until I was older) is always having presents under the tree. We lived out of state for a few years, when I was young, before I even started school. We would always travel the 8 or 9 hours home to be with family for the holidays. We were always gone on Christmas day and we were always worried that Santa would not find us if we were not home. There were 3 little girls (me and my sisters) and dogs making the trip so we always left at night. My dad worked overnights so he would drive and we would sleep and I suppose this kept my parents sane. Right before we pulled out of the driveway, my parents would always go back into the house because they always “forgot” something. They would come back out with some obscure item. We would go to our holidays, come home and have tons of presents from Santa under the tree. Now I understand. They kept all our presents hidden and made that one last trip in the house to put our presents under the tree.
My favorite Christmas memory was having my Grandpa read the story of the baby Jesus out of the bible. To hear his voice tell the story was amazing and so humbling. I long to hear his voice again as he has been gone for 6 years now.
My favorite Christmas memory is of the stockings that my southern grandmother crocheted for us. Even though she is no longer with us, I still have and use mine from my childhood. Before she passed, she made me two extras; one for my future husband and one for my first child. They now use theirs and I am crocheting another for my second child since she taught me how to make them. Each year when I see them hanging on my fireplace, it brings back such wonderful memories of watching her crochet and listening to her stories.
I have many memories of baking and decorating “cut out” sugar cookies at Christmas with Mom and my brother and sisters. My mom was an excellent cook and we usually made “goody boxes” full of all sorts of baked goods to deliver on Christmas Eve to shut-ins or family friends. I have tried to carry this tradition on with my own children. One of my other favorite activities is our Christmas Eve tradition of attending our church Candlelight Communion then taking the kids on a drive to look at Christmas lights. I LOVE Christmas and all the traditions that go along with it!
Halloween is my best friend’s birthday, so every October 31 was devoted to parties with painted pumpkins, trick or treating in large groups, candysorting, it was good.