Sugar Cookie Recipe from Flour Pot

This is the recipe that I use for all my sugar cookies.
It is taken from the book "The Flour Pot - Cookie Book" by Margie and Abbey Greenberg. I bought the book 2 years ago from Times Bookstore for rm56.95.


I am copying word for word from the book.

What you need:

3 cups (1 pound) all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
parchment paper

Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 350F

In a medium bowl, sift the flour together with the baking powder and set aside.

In an electric mixing bowl using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. This should take about 3 minutes.
Add the egg and vanilla and beat another minute or so.

Add the flour mixture in 2 batches. Be careful not to add too much at a time or you will be in a snowstorm of flour.

Blend until dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Take the dough out of the mixer and place it on a piece of parchment paper. Using your hand knead the dough for about a minute. Place the dough in a plastic bag and refrigerate for at least an hour. This will make the dough easier to handle when you roll it out. However if you must, you can roll the cookies immediately without refrigeration.

We roll our cookies on parchment paper so there is no need for extra flour. Roll the dough with a rolling pin until it is about 1/8inch thick. When they bake, these cookies will not really spread, so you can cut the dough out and place them pretty close to each other on a baking tray.
If you are creating a cookie on a stick, this is the time to place lollipop sticks in your cookies.

Bake for 8 minutes or until the cookies begin to take a golden color. they will continue to cook when removed from the oven , so don't let them get too brown before taking them out.
These cookies also freeze very well. To give them that just baked taste, pop them back into the oven for just a minute or two. But don't freeze the cookies once decorated.


Notes from Najat
#1 2 sticks of butter (US) equals to 1 block MYsian size. Either 227g or 250g, it does not make much difference as I will add a bit more flour at the kneading stage if the mixture is too soft.
#2 I sometimes do not refrigerate the dough but cover it in a cling wrap and place it at a cool place in the kitchen. If refrigerated I will let it thaw for 30 minutes before rolling it out.
#3 I use 2 plastic mat and place the dough in between them when rolling. This way no extra flour needed and no hands touching the dough until I use the cookie cutter.

Thanks, Najat. Sounds great and your butterflies were really beautiful...lots of love in there!

From my 'years' of experience in online forums , I must give you a friendly nudge that it's ok to post the ingredients word for word, but the method needs to be paraphrased to avoid infringement of rights if copied from a published source. Thanks for so generously sharing this...you're so sweet.

Ta!

Other than the presence of salt, is there any big difference in using salted or unsalted butter? I personally love salted butter coz err.. salty.. hehehe.. and I imagine because of my preference, it is ok to use salted butter. Would someone tell me the science behind salted and unsalted butter other than the.. err.. salt?

Thanks najat for the recipe.

Najat, your works really impressed me and give me the confidence to try it out...even though its something new. Thanks for the recipe. Will try it out one of this days when I am feeling better. Have been looking for a recipe for the cookies. Try some and didnt turn out well. It is that all the cookies must be thick so that it will not be soggy easily and boleh tahan lama?

Hi Amy, I cannot speak for others but I have always done my cookies thicker than the shops'. In my humble opinion, since the cookies take a long time to dry and if you use fondant you need to apply a thin coat of sugar syrup (glucose) as the 'glue', the top surface will be soft. If the cookie is thin, the royal icing or sugar syrup will seep right through. Therefore the extra thickness can overcome the softness and the cookies stay crispier longer.
And thicker cookie dough does not break as easily as the thinner one. Again this is my personal preference ... you may try as you wish.

Thanks Najat for the info. Have a good day

Hi Najat and Everyone.

Thanks for the great recipe! I am preparing for my little one party coming soon.

What type of fondant can we use on cookies? The fondant will dry up and stays on the cookies?

I was wondering about the salted vs unsalted butter as well. Like Inamohde, I too prefer salted butter ... in fact, i am a sucker for salted butter because i can just eat it off the package. Anyway if the recipe calls for unsalted butter and 'a pinch of salt' I'll just omit the salt if I use salted butter. I suppose that's okay?

I roll my cookie dough first between sheets of parchment/baking paper and then refrigerate the rolled dough (or put it in the freezer - faster!). Then I take it out when it's slightly hard and cut with the cookie cutter. It's very easy to handle the dough this way. The recipe I use is just great as the dough almost does not spread at all!

Najat Ahmad wrote:This is the recipe that I use for all my sugar cookies.
It is taken from the book "The Flour Pot - Cookie Book" by Margie and Abbey Greenberg. I bought the book 2 years ago from Times Bookstore for rm56.95.


I am copying word for word from the book.

What you need:

3 cups (1 pound) all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
parchment paper

Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 350F

In a medium bowl, sift the flour together with the baking powder and set aside.

In an electric mixing bowl using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. This should take about 3 minutes.
Add the egg and vanilla and beat another minute or so.

Add the flour mixture in 2 batches. Be careful not to add too much at a time or you will be in a snowstorm of flour.

Blend until dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Take the dough out of the mixer and place it on a piece of parchment paper. Using your hand knead the dough for about a minute. Place the dough in a plastic bag and refrigerate for at least an hour. This will make the dough easier to handle when you roll it out. However if you must, you can roll the cookies immediately without refrigeration.

We roll our cookies on parchment paper so there is no need for extra flour. Roll the dough with a rolling pin until it is about 1/8inch thick. When they bake, these cookies will not really spread, so you can cut the dough out and place them pretty close to each other on a baking tray.
If you are creating a cookie on a stick, this is the time to place lollipop sticks in your cookies.

Bake for 8 minutes or until the cookies begin to take a golden color. they will continue to cook when removed from the oven , so don't let them get too brown before taking them out.
These cookies also freeze very well. To give them that just baked taste, pop them back into the oven for just a minute or two. But don't freeze the cookies once decorated.


Notes from Najat
#1 2 sticks of butter (US) equals to 1 block MYsian size. Either 227g or 250g, it does not make much difference as I will add a bit more flour at the kneading stage if the mixture is too soft.
#2 I sometimes do not refrigerate the dough but cover it in a cling wrap and place it at a cool place in the kitchen. If refrigerated I will let it thaw for 30 minutes before rolling it out.
#3 I use 2 plastic mat and place the dough in between them when rolling. This way no extra flour needed and no hands touching the dough until I use the cookie cutter.

Hi Kak Najat,

A friend of mine requested for the Sugar Cookie Recipe. I copied and paste the entire recipe to her.

Since she's a beginner, she came back to me with a question, which didn't bother me coz I was looking at 3 cups all these while. In the recipe, it states 3 cups / 1 pound. When she referred to a conversion calculator, 3 cups of flour = 375g, and 1 pound of flour = 450g.

Based on the recipe, I usually follow the 375g, and hasn't gone wrong with this so far.

I'm just wondering if anyone has tried based on 1 pound of flour, and if the answer is yes, how are the texture of the cookies?

Hmmmmmm ... I am not so much of a cup person ... I followed the 1lb recipe .... no problem. Maybe the extra flour gives me less handling problem ... and 'stronger' cookiess ... I don't know .. ..

Soo Chin,
The measuring cups conversion differs as far as I know depending on which part of the world converts it - must be the gravity factor
Please refer to the earlier threads that we have here on the conversion. 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of sugar using the same cup gives you different weight too.

The 75g difference will not affect the cookie dough. Sometimes I would add extra flour too if my dough was too soft.

Soo Chin,

I tried the recipe out recently - following the pound measurement. It actually takes 6 cups of our normal tea cups to make 1 pound. It turned out fine and the kids loved it.