Tuesdays with Dorie—Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies

More cutout cookies this week. This time we're making sugar cookies. I find the hardest part about sugar cookies is decorating them!

A video
Here's a video that gives lots of ideas for decorating sugar cookies.

Or, just sprinkle some colored sugar on top (like I did)!

A book
In my reading this week, I found a new book to add to my Christmas list: Dirty Sugar Cookies: Culinary Observations, Questionable Taste. From the author's blog, I found her recipe for Sugar Cookies. It has the same ingredients as Dorie's, but in slightly different quantities.

A television show
I also watched Alton Brown's "The Cookie Clause" episode. 

Recipe

Dorie's
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 stick plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Dirty Sugar Cookies
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup of shortening (or 2 sticks of butter)
1¼ cup sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

You can find the recipe for Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Ulrike of Küchenlatein who chose the recipe for this week and will post the recipe.

Tasting Notes
Mine were crunchy, which is how I like them. Not doughy. If you like them nice and soft, roll them thicker or bake them less. Sugar cookies on their own are dull, so a sprinkle of sugar or some Caramelized Butter Frosting helps. A sprinkle of "toast dope" (cinnamon sugar) is nice too and transforms them into a cookie more similar to snickerdoodles.

Recipe for Next Week (December 16)
Buttery Jam Cookies on page 80.

Other Christmas cookie ideas:
• Linzer Sablés
• Brown Sugar-Pecan Shortbread Cookies
• Lenox Almond Biscotti
• Rugelach

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