These are the best damn sugar cookies you’ll ever have.
What makes me so confident? I’ve had a lot of cookies. I’ve run a cookie blog for 8 years. I’m not exactly the 120 lb. daughter my mother always wanted, and I can tell you, I didn’t get this way eating salads. I’ve conducted sugar cookie research I didn’t even know I was doing, since I was 8 years-old.
As far as Christmas cookies go, they are number 1. Fight me bro. What makes them so good are the combination of both vanilla and almond extracts.
Jessica’s Best Sugar Cookies
1 1/2 c. sifted powdered sugar
1 c. butter
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
1/2 t. almond extract
2 1/2 c. flour
1 t. baking soda
1 t. cream of tartar
Directions
1. Cream butter and sugar. Mix in egg and extracts. Blend dry ingredients and stir in.
2. Refrigerate 2-3 hours. Divide dough in half and roll out. Cut out desired shapes.
3. Bake at 375 for 7-8 minutes.
My little buddy Emmett again helped me with these cookies, since my own kids are large and old and mostly uninterested in cookie decorating these days. Emmett’s dad is one of my very best friends, and has been for 30 years. So when I need an expert kid cookie-decorator, Emmett is my go-to kid.
Emmett did a great job with decorating and saying please and thank yiu and also showing off his reading skills by taking his turn reading Christmas trivia to us.
I made these before Emmett and his chauffeur, I mean Dad, came over, just so we’d have more time to decorate them.
The day Emmett and his dad come over to do Christmas cookies is my favorite cookie day of the year. Maybe we can even do it twice this year. Love this kiddo, and his dad is pretty okay too.
I’m sure I say that about a lot of my cookies, but like claiming you don’t have a favorite child, you know in your heart you actually do.
(Calm down kids; I’m kidding.)
I love almond, and these are almond. They are so almond, every time I make them my middle son comes down and says he smells almond, and that hey, did you know that cyanide also smells like almond.
While I considered changing the name of these to Cyanide Butter Cookies, I decided that I’d deal with lawyers and investigations much less if I left the name alone.
Almond Butter Sticks
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons almond extract
1/2 cup unsalted butter, plus 1 tablespoon (divided)
6 ounces cream cheese
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg, separated (white reserved for glazing)
1/3 cup sliced almonds
1 teaspoon coarse sugar for topping
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
In a small bowl combine the sugar and almond extract; cover and set aside.
In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder.
In a large mixing bowl combine 8 tablespoons (1/2 cup) butter and cream cheese. Beat on low until blended. Add the egg yolk and blend until smooth. Add half the flour mixture and beat on low until combined. Add the remaining flour and blend just until the dough starts to come together.
Transfer the dough to a floured work surface. Knead by hand about 25 strokes until the dough is pliable. Roll or press into a 12×12 inch square. Spread with the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter.
Cut the dough in half and place one half on the prepared cookie sheet, butter side up.
Spoon the sugar mixture to within 1/2-inch of the dough edges all the way around. Place the remaining dough half, butter side down, over the sugar. Press the edges tightly to seal.
Brush the dough with a lightly beaten egg white. Sprinkle with almonds and coarse sugar.
Bake 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. It’s best removed from the oven when you think it needs one or two more minutes.
Cool at least 30 minutes.
Cut the pastry in half lengthwise and then into 1/2 to 1 inch strips crosswise.
Store in an airtight container.
How my favorite cookies develops from nothing to something amazing.
I also like these because they have a bunch of almonds on top, and that throws kids off. Right now, I have three teenagers, and they are not allowed to eat my cookies without permission because they basically unhinge their jaw and swallow without chewing. Mom’s cookies deserve to be enjoyed and savored, not swallowed whole.
My point here is that they can have these cookies, but they don’t want them. Why? “Because there are nuts on the top.” I don’t point out that most of the cookies they like have nuts in them, because why change an outcome I benefit from. They don’t know what they’re missing and that’s fine by me!
I also know that I’ll be making these again before Christmas because someone has eaten most of my supply. ::sheepishly raises hand::
I made the Peppermint Meringues from the current Food Network magazine, and had a lot of trouble with them. Actually, nine times out of ten when I’ve made cookies from Food Network magazine, I’ve had trouble.
I’m not a baking novice by any stretch of the imagination, and if I were, this recipe would discourage me and make me think I just wasn’t cut out for baking cookies.
Again, no one is perfect. I certainly screw up. Even with cookies. At least once a year while I do my 24 days of cookies, one batch doesn’t work.
This is that batch.
I make meringue cookies every year band have been doing so since Britney rocked a belly chain and low-rise jeans. I know the concept. So when my meringue didn’t set up (using the directions exactly as written), I was perplexed.
And then I started over. This time, I used powdered sugar instead of granular. While it wasn’t as bad as the first batch, it definitely wasn’t up to my meringue standards. That was the first problem.
My second problem came when trying to paint the red stripes in the pastry bag. It’s tough to do, and I ended up using an unused paint brush from my arts and crafts collection. I tried a pastry brush before this, and it looked like a crime scene. It was too big, and the plastic pastry bag isn’t exactly the easiest surface to paint on.
Novice bakers aren’t going to necessarily know to try something else. Heck, I really didn’t know what to do. I totally winged it.
I piped the shapes on the parchment, and because it was a limp and runny meringue, the consistency was off. But I figured I’d try and see what happened. The red stripes did come through, but as I piped more, the color wasn’t as strong. This makes sense to me, but the photo editors at Food Network magazine didn’t get the memo that their picture was to actually look like the cookies their readers would be creating.
After the hour in the oven, I turned off the oven and had them sit in the oven for another 2 hours. As the directions state.
When I took them out, I was again not pleased.
Brown. My white runny meringues spent too long in the tanning bed before prom, and didn’t look like what they were supposed to look like. That was the final problem with this recipe.
Did anyone else make this recipe and have it turn out well? Because at this point, I’m not actually convinced anyone at the magazine tested this recipe.
Note: I got behind because of illness.. Now that I can at least sit upright for more than a few hours, I am catching up. But with that, these are going to be more bare-bones than in the past.
1/2 cup unsalted butter, plus 1 tablespoon (divided)
6 ounces cream cheese
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg, separated (white reserved for glazing)
1/3 cup sliced almonds
1 teaspoon coarse sugar for topping
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
In a small bowl combine the sugar and almond extract; cover and set aside.
In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder.
In a large mixing bowl combine 8 tablespoons (1/2 cup) butter and cream cheese. Beat on low until blended. Add the egg yolk and blend until smooth. Add half the flour mixture and beat on low until combined. Add the remaining flour and blend just until the dough starts to come together.
Transfer the dough to a floured work surface. Knead by hand about 25 strokes until the dough is pliable. Roll or press into a 12×12 inch square. Spread with the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter.
Cut the dough in half and place one half on the prepared cookie sheet, butter side up.
Spoon the sugar mixture to within 1/2-inch of the dough edges all the way around. Place the remaining dough half, butter side down, over the sugar. Press the edges tightly to seal.
Brush the dough with a lightly beaten egg white. Sprinkle with almonds and coarse sugar.
Bake 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. It’s best removed from the oven when you think it needs one or two more minutes.
Cool at least 30 minutes.
Cut the pastry in half lengthwise and then into 1/2 to 1 inch strips crosswise.
Store in an airtight container.
Somewhere in the original recipe for this, it says that the author likes that these don’t immediately appeal to children, and therefore are leftover when cookies trays are passed.
I feel this in my soul.
These are my hands-down favorite fave cookie that I make. I love almond extract. I love butter and cream cheese and sugar and actual almonds, and I love making a cookie so good, it flies under the radar like a spy drone.
Here’s the link to when I made them last year, if you need the play-by-play. I doubled them last year, because I don’t like sharing. I still don’t like sharing, but I only had one brick of cream cheese left in my fridge and it’s supposed to be 10 degrees outside tonight.
No problems at all making these, as usual. Even with the rolling out and measuring going on here, these are pretty straight forward. By far, the biggest challenge with these cookies are hiding them from my kids, because they’ve caught on how awesome they are.
I’ve been doing this cookie thing for a long time now. The first official year of 24 Days of Cookies was in 2004, when my now 16 year-old son was a precocious two-year-old. He was an only child at that point (and he’d joke that those were the good ol’ days) and was the cutest little dude you ever did see.
Because 2004 was about a million years ago, I don’t have those pictures digital on my computer, but I do have this picture of Nate when he was 3, so just imagine this dude a year younger. Precious.
Anyway, Nate has been my longest-running taste-tester, beater-licker, and cookie-sampler. Nowadays, he’s also my bus boy and world’s greatest dishwasher. Let’s just say he doesn’t have the same enthusiasm about 24 Days of Cookies ever since he was upgraded from garbage to dishes, but he doesn’t complain. Much.
Last week, he sent me a text from upstairs (because: teenagers), with a cookie recipe. He’s never suggested a cookie before. They grow up so fast.
Here he is now, at drivers ed last week. Doesn’t he look thrilled to be taking a picture with his mom?
So, for Nate, I made Eggnog Cookies today. The recipe looked pretty good and tasted even better.
I creamed together the butter and sugars, and once again, the recipe called for it to be pale and fluffy. What’s with that? It’s got brown sugar in it too, so I wasn’t sure how pale this would end up.
After adding vanilla and rum extracts to this, I added the pièce de rèsistance:
This is a hot commodity in our house. My middle son has been asking for eggnog for awhile, and so I bought two quarts early in the week. Aside from a glass or two by other people, he drank both quarts on the sly, and then complained all evening of digestive disturbance. Even with those natural consequences, I had to buy this secretly and hide it.
After adding all the dry ingredients, I put the dough on my parchment-lined baking sheets and baked them as directed. Because I think my oven is a few degrees cooler than normal (hi landlord…), it took a few minutes longer, but ultimately turned out pretty well.
I then got started on the frosting, which also calls for rum extract and eggnog. And butter, and a crapload of powdered sugar.
Can anyone make frosting without making a mess? I seem to just have a knack for the mess, and I hope there are others out there like me.
Once frosted, I topped the cookies with a shake or two of nutmeg. Nate emerged from his den of adolescence and ate one. He gave his seal of approval and said they tasted just like eggnog.
1/2 cup butter , at room temperature (I used 1/4 cup salted and 1/4 cup unsalted butter)
3 – 5 Tbsp eggnog
1/2 tsp rum extract
3 cups powdered sugar
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). In a mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon for 30 seconds, set aside.
In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, whip together butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar until pale and fluffy.
Mix in egg yolks one at a time, blending just until combined after each addition. Mix in vanilla extract, rum extract and egg nog. With mixer set on low speed, slowly add in dry ingredients and mix just until combined.
Scoop dough out by the heaping tablespoonfuls and drop onto Silpat or parchment paper lined baking sheets, spacing cookies 2-inches apart.
Bake in preheated oven 11 – 13 minutes. Allow to rest on baking sheet several minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool. Cool completely then frost with Eggnog Frosting and sprinkle tops lightly with nutmeg.
For the Eggnog Frosting:
In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, whip butter until very pale and fluffy. Add in rum extract and 3 Tbsp eggnog and mix in powdered sugar. Add additional eggnog to reach desired consistency.
24 Days of Cookies 