Connie's Sugar Cookies

It's the time of year when visions of all kinds of sweet things dance through our heads.  Our tried and true favorites we make every year plus the new recipes we're enticed with on Pinterest, in magazines, or cook books.  Like most of you, I have my favorites.  One is a drop sugar cookie that is so light and crispy, you can snarf down the whole batch before you realize what you've done!  Cut out sugar cookies have never been my favorite.  I remember making them with mom as a kid, and we ate them, but as a kid...it was about the sugar.  I didn't care much about things like texture, lightness, or that they were mostly like eating sweetened cardboard.  

Now that you knowing my feelings about how most cutout sugar cookies have texture and taste like cardboard, this post will seem odd.    I had not planned to make sugar cookies this year, and definitely not cut out sugar cookies.  However, I found these beautiful cookie cutters at William's Sonoma and well, I have to use them.  I plead my case for a tasty Sugar Cookie recipe asking my Facebook friends if anyone had one they would be willing to share and my friend Connie came to my rescue.  Connie and I grew up in the same small town and played together as children.  I remember swimming in her backyard pool and us gushing over teenage heart throbs Bobbie Sherman and David Cassidy (yes, that has been a few years ago), but all good memories!

Not only did Connie come to my rescue with her recipe, the recipe is super easy to make!  If you have a food processor, you will have your cookie dough mixed up and ready to go in less than 10 minutes and clean up is easy too because it's all done in the food processor.

I have to admit in looking at a lot of sugar cookie recipes, this is the only one I've seen that is made with only egg yolks.  Don't discount the recipe because you don't know what to do with the egg whites.  You can use the leftover egg whites to make some Cinnamon Sugar Pecans.

I am so excited to have a rolled Sugar Cookie recipe  and with Connie's permission, you can have it too!  Thank you Connie!  Merry Christmas!

Connie's Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 tsp. salt
3 large egg yolks
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 tsp. almond extract

Directions:

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, salt and butter pieces.  Process until the mixture is the texture of coarse meal.

In a small bowl lightly beat the egg yolks with the vanilla and almond extracts.

With the motor running on the food processor, slowly pour the egg yolk mixture into the bowl.  

Continue to process, just until the dough comes together into a ball.  Divide in half.

Roll each half between two sheets of parchment paper to 1/4 inch thickness.  Leaving the dough between the parchment, slide the rolled dough onto a cookie sheet and refrigerate for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
While the oven is preheating, remove the rolled dough from the fridge.
Dust your cookie cutters with more confectioner's sugar and cut out the cookies, removing excess dough.  Leave the cookies on the parchment sheet on the cookie sheet.  Transfer the cookies to the oven and bake 10 minutes, watching them closely so they don't brown.  Carefully slide the parchment and the cookies from the cookie sheet to a cooling rack to cool. 

While the cookies are baking, continue cutting the cookies from the remaining chilled dough.  Transfer the parchment to the cookie sheet and bake.  Take the dough trimmings and knead them back together and roll out and cut additional cookies, repeating until all the dough is used.

After the cookies are cool, decorate the cookies as you would like.

I made one batch to try the recipe, I made a variety of sizes of snowflake cookies and your number of cookies will vary depending on the size of cookies you make.

These are very tasty cookies and I'll bet there won't be any left for Santa!

 ...and that's What's Cooking at Cathy's ~ Enjoy!