Friday, December 10, 2010

My Green Machine :-)

My beautiful shiny new green KitchenAid mixer came in the mail on Monday. But this was finals week!! So I had to wait until tonight to use it...and it was delightful.




I recently ran across this blog: Bake at 350. This woman makes some killer decorated sugar cookies, and I needed in on that. So I borrowed her recipe and ran with it!

She starts by creaming cold salted butter and sugar.

Notice that I used my new mixer.

I kind of love it.


Since the butter's cold, it'll take a little longer than usual.
Add in an egg and vanilla extract. She also suggested almond extract; I had lemon extract on hand, so I used that. It was a great choice!


Pour in flour and baking powder, and mix to combine.


This dough is kind of funny, because it ends up crumbly, and you're left saying, "How did I mess up a sugar cookie recipe? Really??".


But it's supposed to be like this! You just need to knead it with your hands to get it to a good cookie dough consistency.


I took about half the dough and put it on a piece of parchment paper. There's no need to chill the dough before rolling it out because we started with cold butter, remember?



Dust everything in sight with flour, and roll it out to your desired consistency.



FYI - that is too thin. But it happened.
As my students say, "It's like, whatever."
As I say, "I'm over it."

I got cookie cutters at Sur La Table last night. I had never been to that remarkable place... I love it!

I cut these out and put them on another piece of parchment and stuck them in the freezer for 5 minutes before baking them - that is the key to keeping crisp edges! And it worked!
Repeat with the remaining dough, making sure to reuse all the scraps. At the end, when I didn't have quite enough left for another cookie, I just grabbed the extra pieces and baked them as a snack. :-)

Before they were baked....

And after! They are delightful and popped right off the cookie sheets (because they're full of butter!).


These were my favorites - look at these adorable snowflakes!!



And I made lots of little trees and ornaments and people.



Tomorrow is my first experiment with royal icing (because these are WAY too cute to leave alone!!).
Here's the recipe for the cookies (adapted from Bake at 350):
3 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 c sugar
2 sticks salted butter, cold
1 egg
3/4 tsp lemon extract
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees.

2 comments:

  1. Oh Paige these are beautiful! Congratulations, you are entering the formal world of Christmas cookie baking. I love the color--do you have a name for her?...the machine of course!

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  2. My sister-in-law, who waited forever before she finally got her own kitchenaid, would say you are now a real woman. Congratulations friend! :-)

    Candice

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