Everything You Need To Know About Sugar Cookies
By Nina Jacobs
Sugar cookies are one of the most widely used cookies for the holidays. This is a simple cookie to make and it is easy to shape into different designs such as pumpkins, ghost, trees, candy canes, flowers, etc. Fun fact, sometime in the 1930s, it became a tradition for children to leave sugar cookies and milk out for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. But where did sugar cookies come from? Who came up with this delicious yet simple cookie? Well, we can trace the sugar cookie all the way back to the 7th century in Persia, along with the farming of sugar. And in the mid-1700s in Nazareth Pennsylvania. German Protestant settlers created the round, crumbly, buttery cookie that came to be known as the Nazareth Cookie. The Nazareth Sugar Cookie was also known as the jumble, sugar cakes, gimblettes, and a few other names. It was a biscuit that gained popularity in the 17th and 18th century in Europe, chiefly because of the fact that, as a non-leavened food, it could be dried and stored for many months. They were often savory rather than sweet, flavored with rosewater. They were traditionally shaped in knots and the texture of early sugar cookies varied from soft and chewy to firm or hard. In fact, some of the first sugar cookie recipes may have called for boiling the dough before baking it. The dough was rolled, cut into narrow strips, tied in a knot, and then boiled and baked until crispy in order to withstand the test of time. The result was a cross between the modern bagel and a cookie. Sugar cookies can be considered basic, but never boring, the tender, buttery sugar cookie has an invitation to almost any celebration. These classics can be a blank canvas for festive shapes and designs, or a vessel for bold flavors. Today you can make soft, scrumptious cookies in minutes, either from scratch or using any of a number of packaged mixes or frozen dough preparations. But everyone needs a great sugar cookie recipe on hand, so I will give you one. First, you will need a few ingredients such as 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour, ½ tsp baking powder, ½ tsp salt, 1 cup of softened unsalted butter, 1 ¾ cup sugar. 1 egg, ½ tsp vanilla, and lastly ½ cup of sugar to sprinkle on top of your cookie dough. Next, preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Then in a bowl, using an electric mixer, mix together butter and sugar until the mixture is light, fluffy and white. Scrape down sides of the bowl, and add your egg and mix well. Now add vanilla, and mix until everything is well combined. It should be the consistency of a gritty frosting. In another large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Next, add dry ingredients all at once into the other bowl of wet ingredients and mix until it’s all incorporated. Next, we have two options we can use a cookie cutter, or we can roll 1-inch balls to make cookies. If we are going to do cookie cutter we first need to roll out dough, one disk at a time, on lightly floured work surface until it's about 1/8 inch thick. Create shapes, using a lightly floured cookie cutter. Gather any dough scraps, roll and repeat the cookie-cutting process, chilling as necessary. Then place on buttered baking pan about 2 inched apart. If you just want to make regular shaped cookies take pieces of your dough and roll them in 1 inched sized balls and place them 2 inches apart on a buttered baking pan. Then sprinkle sugar on top. Bake for 15-17 minutes or until cookie edges are lightly golden brown. After they are finished cooking let them cool for a few minutes and then you can decorate with glaze, icing, frosting, sprinkles, colored sugar or whatever your heart desires. Another fun fact is July 9th is national sugar cookie day!
References
http://www.sweetoothdesign.com/cookie-nazareth
Reference: Wikipedia: Fun Facts about Sugar Cookies. http://sumo.ly/yTcl via @MobileCuisine
https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/sugar-cookies.htm by Sara Elliott
http://www.rootedcook.com/2012/12/a-brief-history-of-the-sugar-cookie/ The Rooted Cook is copyright © 1997–2017 by David Walbert.
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