Soft Sugar Cookies

Hi everybody, welcome back to Marie's Kitchen. I'm so glad you're here. Today we're making Amish sugar cookies. Now my recipe is a little bit different than one you might find on the web and that's because I've changed a few ingredients to make these even softer, even cakier, even more tender so they just melt in your mouth. And I have to say when I need a cookie now, whether it's for book club or cooking class or the kids bake sales, this is the cookie that I make because they're just so good and everybody loves them. I can't wait to share it with you. Let's get started. Okay, first step is one stick, one half cup or 113 grams of butter. And I'm using unsalted butter. You can certainly use salted and then just leave out the salt. And it's nice and soft. I've had it out for a couple hours. I got it out this morning and I got out an egg but I can't find it. I don't know where it is. I got out the egg to let it warm up to room temp and now it's gone. So I was thinking maybe somebody put it away but then nobody puts stuff away in my house. Nobody would put that away. Who knows? It'll turn up. Next ingredient is one half cup of light olive oil. Light olive oil has virtually no flavor so it works as a great substitution if you're not using canola anymore. And the oil is one of those ingredients that I use instead of using all butter that's going to help these cookies be really soft and tender because what that oil does is it's going to coat the flour which results in less gluten development. So that results in a more tender cookie. Next step is one half cup granulated sugar. We're going to add that in. And then next, instead of using all granulated sugar, we're going to use half powdered sugar. Powdered sugar is finer granules of sugar, finer than granulated sugar, and it includes a little bit of cornstarch. And both of those things are going to help make an even more tender cookie. So that's why we use the powdered sugar. Scoop that up and then just level it off. Powdered sugar. And we're going to cream these until fairly smooth and fluffy, about two minutes. There's Gracie with the police sirens. Watch out. Okay, it's been about two minutes. I'm going to scrape down the sides. Give it one more mix. All right. I'll set this aside while we get together the dry ingredients. Next, we'll need about two and a quarter cup all-purpose flour. Hopefully I have that in here. Here we go. There's one. Time for a refill. There's two. Let's see if I can get a quarter out of this. You can tell I'm kind of a one-woman show. Forgot to refill the flour. Okay, this looks great. I think we have exactly the right amount. Perfection. Okay, and there's one quarter cup. And where are my teaspoons? Where'd they go? I mean, I just had them. Oh, there they are. Next is one half teaspoon of baking soda, and then one half teaspoon of cream of tartar. And that adds a little bit of tang, kind of like in snickerdoodles. It also helps with lift. It is an acid that activates that baking soda to give some nice puff to these cookies. So half teaspoon of that. And next, one quarter teaspoon salt. And again, if you use a salted butter, just leave out the salt. Now give this a quick stir. Aren't these easy? Just feels so, so simple. Now let's pull this back over. We've got a few more things to add. We're going to add one egg. I had to go get another one. This isn't the last one. And then one teaspoon vanilla extract. So you get a lot of good vanilla flavor. If you wanted to add in a little bit of almond extract or lemon, have fun with it. These are very versatile, so you can mix up the flavors if you like. All right, let's give this a spin. Okay, now with egg, you don't want to mix it as long as you mix the butter and oil and sugar. If you mix egg too much, what can happen is it gets so much air in it. Then when it goes in the oven, it rises, then it falls. And kind of like a souffle, we don't want that with your cookies. So you don't want to over whip those eggs. You don't want to whip in too much air. And I hope these little tips are helpful. I think they'll make you a better baker. Sometimes it's little things, you know, that make a big difference. Now we'll add our dry ingredients. Hopefully I can get this up before Easter. I think this would be such a fun cookie to have on Easter. So simple. You could decorate it with a little colored sugar or sprinkles if you want. Okay, let's give this a mix. I'll scrape down the sides. Okay, there we go. As with all cookies, you want to mix just to combine. Over mixing is going to create a lot of gluten in that flour and that results in a tougher cookie. Now this dough is very wet, so it can be a little surprising. You might think, oh, maybe I did something wrong. But don't worry, it's a very, very wet dough. It's almost like cake batter, but not quite. So I'm going to show you a close-up. Hopefully you can see that it is very wet. Now because this is such a wet dough, what I'm going to do next is pop it in the refrigerator while we preheat the oven. So we're going to preheat the oven to 375 degrees and let this sit in the refrigerator for however long it takes to preheat, maybe five minutes or so. And that'll give this a little chill and make it a little easier to work with. Okay, the oven's preheated. So we got our dough out of the refrigerator. And I'm going to use about a one and a half teaspoon cookie scoop. I can put a link to this one in the description box if you'd like one. This one is very strong. I love it. And it's just the right size for these. These are kind of smaller cookies. We'll add 12 to the cookie sheet. It's really easy. They don't get stuck in the scooper, which is nice. Now this makes four dozen cookies, which is a lot. But always remember, you can scoop out these little balls of dough and then pop this in the freezer, freeze until solid and then store them in an African gray parrot, Gracie, she's she wants to say hello to everyone. Where was I? Okay, freezer, you can scoop these out, freeze them till solid, put them in a zip top bag and then just pull them out when you need them. When you want some cookies, you can just pull out as many as you want, set them on your baking sheet, don't saw, throw them in the oven, same time or same temp, but then add about one or two minutes to the bake time since they're baking from frozen. But I love having cookies in the freezer. It's the best. So those are ready for the oven at 375. We're going to bake it for about eight to 10 minutes. All right, into the oven. All right, well, that batch finishes cooking. I've made a second batch here. I'm going to try to put these little spring sprinkles that I got. I think I got them at home goods. Anyway, I'm going to try to sprinkle these on, see if they're stick. I might need to flatten the top just a bit to give it a little surface. Yeah, I'm going to do that, flatten the top and then put some on. I haven't done these with sprinkles before, so we'll see how it goes. I love sprinkles. They make everything look so festive. Okay, hopefully you can see those. Okay, our first batch is almost ready. So I've got my oven mitts. Oh my gosh, they look so good. They're so pretty. See how they puff up like that a little bit. Oh, I hear you kitchen timer. Hang on. And you can see they're just barely, barely golden on the bottom. So you don't want these crisp. You want them so nice and tender. And that's just how these turned out. Oh my gosh, why is it still beeping at me? Now we can pretty quickly move these over to a cookie drying rack. We don't need them to keep cooking on this hot pan, so wire rack is best. And they are very, oh, that was hot. Hey Gracie. Hey girl. They're very tender. So be careful as you're moving them. Whoops, as I throw one across the room. Oh wow, look at these. The sprinkle cookies are ready and they turned out adorable. I love these. Just a little extra sparkle on them. They're so, so cute. Great. Now I get to try one. These are cool enough to taste. I'm going to break one open for you and let you see how nice and cakey it is inside. Oh, look at that. Yum. I love a cakey cookie. It really just melts in your mouth. I love this cookie. It melts in your mouth. It's not too sweet. It's got just the best texture. You've got to try these. If you like this video, be sure to give us a thumbs up and also hit the subscribe button and ring that bell for notifications. And then if you can find the hype button on that like bar, hit the hype button. That can really help my channel too. For this recipe and more, check the description box below. And you can also head over to my website, mariesaba.com. I'll post this over there and there are no ads, no pop-ups, nothing crazy jumping out at you when you're trying to look at recipes. It's just recipes and then you're able to print them. So hopefully that's helpful for you and less stressful than a lot of websites these days. My goal is to give you some really easy recipes that turn out great every time so you can build some confidence in the kitchen and feel really inspired to share good food with people that you love. From my kitchen to yours, thank you. See you next time. So good. Cocoa, how are you doing girl? Huh? What are you doing? Huh? Hey girl. Hey girl. Want to get up on the couch? Who's a good girl? Oh, you have your little dolly. There she is. This is her little dolly. She plays with it, but she doesn't destroy it like her other. It's her little teddy bear. It's so cute. Oh my goodness, you're so cute. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. You're going to say hello? Cocoa, say hello to birdie. Huh?