Simple Delicious Homemade Cookie Recipe
There’s nothing quite like coming into a nice warm house after being outdoors and smelling freshly baked goodies. These simple, delicious homemade cookies are great choices when the weather is cold. However, you can make these cookies at any time of the year, not just when the temperatures dip.
Sugar cookies are one of the easiest and most versatile cookies. With a great sugar cookie recipe you can add ingredients to make them new and different depending upon your desires at the time. Here’s what you need to make sugar cookies:
* 1 cup softened butter
* 1 3-ounce package softened cream cheese
* 3/4 cup sugar
* 1 egg
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 3 cups all-purpose flour
Combine all of the ingredients, except the flour, in a large bowl. Using an electric mixer, beat the ingredients until the mixture is creamy. Reduce the speed to low and begin adding flour, being sure to get the flour incorporated. Wrap the dough with plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator for at least two hours or overnight.
When you’re ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and roll it out on a lightly floured surface. Cut the cookies out and place them on cookie sheet. Bake them for 7 to 10 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are lightly brown. Remove them from the oven and allow them to cool completely.
You can decorate sugar cookies with run sugar, which is made similar to royal icing but thinner. When it dries it makes a hard shell. This type of decoration can be made into any color you can create. Have fun with it to create the scrumptious cookies you have envisioned.
Fondant is another option when decorating cookies. This is a pre-made, pliable frosting. You can purchase it in many colors but also add food coloring to create the colors you want. Butter cream icing or piping gel will be needed to attach the fondant to the cooled cookies.
Melt candy coating, or almond bark, to give your cookies a chocolate coating. This can be found in milk chocolate, dark chocolate and white chocolate which can have food coloring added to it. Dip portions of the cookies into the melted candy, sprinkle on crushed peppermints or another candy, and you’re good to go.
Decorate your cookies before you bake them by coloring the sugar before it is added to the cookie dough to give your cookies an overall different color. You can also paint your cookies with egg yolks mixed with food coloring. Nuts, sprinkles and crushed candies can also be added to the dough to change the look of the cookies before you bake them.
This simple, delicious homemade cookie recipe is wonderful all by itself. However, you and your children can have fun decorating the cookies as well. Choose one or more of these decorating ideas when you make cookies this year. Those who eat them will be amazed at how well you’ve done and how great the cookies taste.
