Making holiday cookies — the rolled, cutout, and glazed butter-cookie variety — is everyone’s favorite December activity. Unfortunately, these cookies either look good but taste like cardboard or have buttery, rich flavor but lack visual appeal.
We wanted a simple recipe that would produce cookies sturdy enough to decorate yet tender enough to be worth eating. Superfine sugar helped to achieve a delicate texture, and using the reverse-creaming method — beating the butter into the flour-sugar mixture — prevented the formation of air pockets and produced flat cookies that were easy to decorate.
Looking to make our dough a bit more workable without adding more butter — at 16 tablespoons, we’d maxed out — we landed on the addition of a little cream cheese, which made the dough easy to roll but not too soft. Baking the butter cookies one sheet at a time ensured that they baked evenly. Do not reroll the scraps more than once; it will cause the cookies to be tough.
This recipe can easily be doubled. You can decorate the cooled cookies with Easy All-Purpose Glaze (recipe below) for a sweet, festive touch.
Feel free to use it, dyed or not, on any flat cookie that could use a flourish. The cream cheese in the glaze gives it a slightly thicker consistency that’s good for spreading, and it cuts the sweetness of the glaze with its tang.
FOOLPROOF HOLIDAY COOKIES
Servings: 36
Start to finish: 2 hours
For cookies:
2 1/2 cups (12 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (5 1/4 ounces) superfine sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
16 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and softened
1 ounce cream cheese, softened
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
For all-purpose glaze (about 1 cup):
2 cups (8 ounces) confectioners’ sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1 ounce cream cheese, softened
Food coloring (optional)
Nutrition information per serving: 125 calories; 51 calories from fat; 6 g fat (4 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 15 mg cholesterol; 23 mg sodium; 17 g carbohydrate; 0 g fiber; 11 g sugar; 1 g protein.
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