Ingredients:
6 Tbls. vegetable shortening
6 Tbls. unsalted butter, softened to room temp.
1 C. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 1/2 C. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
Directions:
1. In a large mixing bowl, beat shortening, butter and sugar until light and fluffy. 2. Add eggs one at a time and mix until well blended. 3. Add vanilla and mix well. 4. In a separate mixing bowl, stir flour, baking powder and salt together. Then add dry ingredients to creamed mixture and mix just until a dough forms. 5. Divide dough in half. Flatten each half into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill dough in refrigerator for at least 1 hour. 6. When ready to bake cookies, preheat oven to 400 degrees Farenheit. 7. Roll dough 1/4 to 1/8-inch thick on a lightly floured surface. (I like to place the dough between 2 pieces of waxed paper and dust it with flour.) 8. Cut dough with desired cookie cutters and place on parchment-lined cookie trays. 9. Bake 6-8 minutes or until cookies are very light golden brown around the edges. 10. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool completely. 11. Frost cooled cookies as desired.
Yield: approx. 3 dozen
Just an idea: Roll dough out between two pieces of parchment paper instead of wax paper, cut out with cutters, peel off excess, then slide cut-out cookies onto baking pan on the parchment paper! That way, you never have to pick up and transfer the cookies after they’ve been cut out. Or, better yet…cut parchment paper into squares and roll out each individual cookie between two squares, cut out, remove excess, then slide square of parchment with cut out onto baking sheet! 😀
Thanks for the suggestion! I have never tried that technique, but it makes perfect sense: you’re going to bake the cookies on parchment paper anyway, so why take any more steps than necessary? I’ll have to try that next time.
[…] is my favorite cut-out sugar cookie recipe, along with my favorite icing for sugar cookies. Enjoy! February 17th, 2010 | Category: cookies, […]
I had a problem with my sugar cookies spreading, they lost their shape after baking and was told to omit the baking powder all together. Anyone agree?
Hi Cindy- I have never heard that suggestion, but I’m not sure it would solve the problem if you omitted the baking powder. Baking powder makes the cookies rise, so eliminating it would only make the cookies spread even more, I think.
My best solutions for preventing cut-out cookies from spreading are: 1) Keep the dough cold while you’re working with it. You can also put the tray of cookies in the frige AFTER you cut them out but BEFORE you bake them. That should help minimize the spread. 2) Bake the cookies on parchment paper: that reduces spreading quite a bit. 3) Re-roll the scraps only one time. The more you roll the scraps again and again, the more the cookies lose their shape. 4) Use a 50-50 combination of butter and shortening for the fat in the recipe. Using all butter tastes really good, but it is also more likely to spread. Using shortening for half of the fat can reduce the spreading a bit.
Hope that helps!