Sugar Cookies

Now that I finally have my own oven, I've decided to be super ambitious and bake my Christmas gifts this year. And since its already the last week of November, I figured there's no harm in starting already (especially since our Christmas tree is up and all:) )

Over the next few posts I'll be writing about my baking presents, starting with today's entry about sugar cookies. Whenever I think about Christmas cookies, two main types come to mind: gingerbread men and decorated sugar cookies. I'm planning to try both but I decided to start with the sugar cookies and I went with the basic sugar cookie recipe from Joy of Baking.

Its a super easy recipe! First cream 1 cup of butter with 1 cup of sugar until its nice and fluffy. Add in 2 eggs and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. I'd also seen some recipes where you can put in a teaspoon of almond extract and one of vanilla if you wanted a slightly more complex taste. I stuck with the original though.

Next add the dry ingredients: 3 cups of flour, 1/2 a teaspoon of salt and one teaspoon of baking soda. By the time its all mixed, the batter looks pretty doughy (and most of it was stuck to the paddle of my mixer).

The next step is to put the dough into the fridge for at least an hour so that its easier to work with. You could either stick the whole mixing bowl into the fridge or separate the dough into a ziplock bag or two, which is what I did.

After an hour or so, preheat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Generously flour the surface you're going to work on.

Pull out the dough. I only took one bag out of the fridge.

Roll it out till its about 1 cm thick.

Then stamp away! I managed to get a set of Christmas themed cookie cutters too :)

 Place your cut-outs on a baking tray lined with baking paper and pop it back in the fridge for another 10 - 15 mins or so before it goes into the oven.

Bakity bake.

And about 10 mins or so later (I honestly didn't really watch the clock here) when the cookies turn a nice golden brown around the edges, pull them out.

And ta-da! Christmas-shaped sugar cookies, just ready and waiting to be iced!

Make your own! Get the recipe and how to here.