Today’s post: These sugar cookies are far superior to anything you can purchase at the grocery shop, and the highlight for the evening is that simple cream cheese frosting! Cookies are nice and soft, and the frosting is rich and thick. They’re great for baking for the holidays or any time you’d like sugar cookies. You don’t require chilling the dough!
Easy Recipe
Family members have been baking this sugar cookie for a long time! They’re one of our most loved treats to bake for special occasions like the Christmas season or Valentine’s Day because you can create them in fun shapes with beautiful colored frosting. The great part about this particular recipe is the fact that, unlike the majority of recipes for cutting out sugar cookies, there is no need to need wait for the dough to cool prior to cutting it! I don’t know what you think but I don’t like baking cookies to be an all-day event. I’d rather mix them together and then get them baking, and that’s exactly what you can achieve by following this recipe.
The Cream Cheese Frosting
This is a basic classic sugar cookie recipe with the mild flavor of butter and vanilla. The main attraction here is the cream cheese frosting that you’ve tried. It’s got cream cheese and butter to give an ideal amount of sweetness and flavor. It’s fluffy and soft, and tastes much better than the boring royal frosting. It’s easy to apply on top of cookies using a butter knife or put it inside a Ziplock and cut off a corner in order for you to “pipe” the frosting over the cookies. Once you’ve frosted your cookies, decorate them with whatever you want including the sprinkles and colored sugar.
Sugar Cookie Baking Tips
Sugar cookies are loved by many because they’re soft and sweet. There are a few aspects to consider that can aid you in making the perfect sugar cookies:
Be cautious to not make the dough too thinly. Anything smaller than 1/4 inch is probably too thin. I try to aim for just less than 3/8 inch for myself. I like this rolling pin that comes with thickness guides that allow for perfect rolled dough. If you don’t own an iron like this I would suggest getting an appropriate ruler and taking measurements of the dough till you’ve got an understanding of the way 3/8 feels.
You’ll need some flour prior to rolling out your cookies so lightly dust your work area, then scoop out some dough and sprinkle additional flour to the top. As you continue to roll out dough, you might need to add a bit more flour, but only enough to make sure your dough does not stick your rolling pin.
Be sure to watch the cookies carefully to make sure you do not over bake the cookies. This could be difficult the first time you bake sugar cookies as it is important to avoid them to brown at all (see pictures below). Pay close attention to the cookie tray you’re baking to determine the amount of time they’ll need to bake in your oven. After baking, they’ll be soft and puffy with enough firmness to slip from the baking sheet effortlessly. When you get close to the outside edge, the cookie will feel firm. But the edges of the cookies should remain white. 10 to 11 minutes is about right to bake sugar-based cookies however it might take one or two baking sheets to determine the ideal baking time for your oven. It’s okay, since after the cookies have cooled and frosted, most people won’t be able distinguish between the two. If you’re trying to achieve perfect cookies, you should err towards the direction of being underdone, instead of overdone.
Tips For A Perfect Cream Cheese Frosting
The secret to truly great cream cheese frosting is to get the consistency to the right level. You want it to be smooth and spreadable, yet not so soft that it can loose its shape. Two factors can aid you in achieving the ideal consistency:
Do not make sure that you do not melt your butter. Both the butter and cream cheese must be at room temperature , or slightly softened so that you are able to beat them to create an even frosting. However, melting butter can transform your fluffy frosting into a runny frosting.
Make sure to add the milk slowly. It’s easy to make a mess when frosting contains milk So start with just only half of the amount required and then continue adding the rest slowly. If the frosting is smooth enough even without the milk needed do not fret about adding the remainder. If you’ve added too amount of milk, you might be able rectify the issue by adding additional powdered sugar.
Soft Sugar Cookies are simple to make using only a few ingredients. And the Cream Cheese Frosting is what takes these cookies to the next level!
INGREDIENTS
Cookies
2 cups of Sugar
1 cup Butter
3 Eggs
1/4 cup Milk
5 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon Salt
5 teaspoons baking Powder
Cream Cheese Frosting
6 tablespoons butter softened
Dash of Salt
1.5 teaspoon Vanilla
4.5 cups of powdered sugar
4 tablespoons of milk
6 oz Cream Cheese softened
INSTRUCTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Cookies
Mix together sugar eggs, butter, eggs, and milk until they are well mixed into a bowl large enough, or inside the bowl the stand mixer.
Add salt, flour along with baking powder, until together.
Use a generous amount of flour to coat the work surface as well as the rolling pin.
Make about one-quarter of dough at a stretch to 3/8 inch thick.
Cut the cookies using cookie cutters, and place them on the cookie sheet covered with a liner for the cookie sheet or parchment.
Bake for about 10 minutes or until the cookies are finished and removed from baking sheet right away. Frost after cooling completely.
Frosting
Soften the butter and cream cheese. Blend with powdered sugar, vanilla, salt and half of the milk. The rest of the milk in a gradual manner, and beat until frosting is fluffy and smooth.
Add food color, if you wish and then frost cookies.
Keep Cookies in an airtight container and store them at room temperatures.
TIPS
The quantity of cookies that you will get from this recipe will be determined by the thickness of your dough as well as how big the cookie cutters you use are. Forty cookies is a rough estimation using round cutters of three inches. Should you want to create half of the batch, you need to split all the ingredients into two halves (use one egg in total as well as one yolk egg).
The time required to bake cookies will depend on the oven you have and the thickness you roll the dough. Start checking the cookies at 9 minutes. Do not let the cookies get brown in any way (unless you are a fan of crunchy cookies).
I prefer vanilla extract to make the frosting however if you prefer the almond flavor of the frosting, feel free to substitute almond extract.
Some people have expressed doubt about whether there is enough baking powder used in this recipe, saying that it is tasting salty. After making this recipe hundreds of times, and never thought that the cookies were sweet, I would guess that the readers might have utilized baking soda, rather than baking powder. If you’d prefer to reduce the baking powder to 3 teaspoons instead of 5, the cookies might be a little more dense and less cakey.