On the first day of December, one of my culinary arts students, Diana Agasian (Grade 11), eagerly approached me and asked if we could start baking Christmas treats.
I was already in holiday mode and said that on the agenda were sugar cookies, ginger cookies, and a whole host of other festive sweet treats.
Later that week, another student, Kayla Bleeker (Grade 10), volunteered to stay at lunchtime so that she could learn how to ice gingerbread and sugar cookies, and her reaction afterwards was one of pure delight: “I love icing! I can’t wait to go home and decorate more cookies!”
So, with Christmas just around the corner, I’d like to share a recipe for sugar cookies from Joy of Cooking: Christmas Cookies.
Not only does this recipe produce a tasty product, but the dough is great to work with and even leftover scraps of dough can be gathered and re-rolled with ease.
Iced sugar cookies recipe yields about three dozen, two-inch cookies
Ingredients for cookies
3 1/4 cups (16.25 oz) all purpose flour.
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
10 oz unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (7 oz) sugar
1 large egg
1 Tbsp millk
2 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp lemon zest, finely grated
Ingredients for royal icing
1/4 cup egg whites (completely free of egg yolks) or if you are concerned with using raw eggs, use:
2 Tbsp meringue powder mixed with 1/4 cup warm water
1/4 tsp lemon juice, freshly squeezed
2 1/2 cups (8.25 oz) powdered sugar plus more as needed.
Directions for cookies:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
In large bowl, whisk together dry ingredients.
In bowl of electric mixer, beat together butter and sugar.
Add remaining ingredients and continue beating until well blended and smooth.
Add dry mixture to butter mixture and beat until smooth. Divide dough in half, form each half into a round disk, wrap tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until cold and slightly firm, about 30 minutes.
Dust work surface lightly with flour, and working with one disk at a time, roll dough until it is 1/4» thick, checking occasionally to make sure dough is not sticking to the table. Using 2- or 3-inch cookie cutters, cut out desired shapes. With a metal spatula, carefully transfer cookies onto prepared cookie sheet, about 1 1/2 inches apart. Gather dough scraps, re-roll and continue cutting out cookies until all the dough has been used. If dough becomes too warm to handle, refrigerate it again briefly.
Bake until cookies are just lightly coloured on top and slightly darker at edges, about 6 to 9 minutes. Rotate sheets halfway through baking for even browning. Transfer sheets to wire racks and let stand until cookies firm up slightly. Once cooled, cookies may be iced with royal icing and desired decorations.
Directions for royal icing:
Place egg whites (or meringue powder/warm water mixture), and lemon juice in large mixing bowl and beat on low speed until frothy. Gradually beat in powdered sugar. Whip on high speed until mixture stands in stiff peaks and is very glossy, about 3-5 minutes. If icing is too thick, thin with a bit of water. If too thin, beat in a bit more powdered sugar.
If different colours of icing are desired, divide it among small bowls before tinting. Gel food paste colours (which are bolder, brighter, and thicker) are preferable, but liquid food colouring will also do. Attach small round tips onto piping bags with couplers and fill bags no more than two-thirds full with icing (using slightly thicker icing for outlining and slightly thinner icing for filling in the cookies (also known as ‘flooding’.) If also decorating with candies, coloured sugar, or nonpareils, sprinkle them on immediately before the icing sets.
(Press a large piece of plastic wrap right onto the icing and cover with a damp tea towel to prevent icing from drying out during decorating.) Let cookies stand 2-3 hours to let icing set completely.
Any leftover royal icing may be stored tightly covered and refrigerated for up to four days.
Adapted from Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker’s Iced Sugar Cookie recipe. Joy of Cooking: Christmas Cookies. New York, Scribner, 1996.
