How to Make Favorite Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookies

-Hi. It's Miranda with recipe.com. And today we're making favorite old-fashioned sugar cookies. Now, this is bound to become your new favorite go-to recipe for sugar cookies. They make excellent cut-outs during the holidays and then just a perfect regularly-shaped sugar cookie anytime of the year. So you have the ingredients all laid out here. Here's what I'm using today. We have 3 cups of all-purpose flour. We have 1 cup of granulated sugar, 1 egg, 1 egg white slightly beaten, 1 cup of unsalted butter soften, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, 1-1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, and then these colored nonpareils here. Or you could use colored sugar if you want, whatever you want to roll your cookie and to decorate. So to begin, we are going to mix together the butter, and a hand mixer is definitely or an electric mixer is essential for this recipe. I'm gonna start by just beating this on low for about 30 seconds. I'm just creaming the butter. Low to medium. It's always a good idea to introduce the sugar slowly anytime you're introducing new sort of powder or sugar, you know, flour into a fat or liquid, it's going to absorb, but you wanna do it slowly so it has a chance. And then next we're gonna add in the egg. Okay. I'm gonna turn this off. I just wanna give my sides a quick scrape. You'll always wanna do that at least once just to make sure that any renegade ingredients stuck along the side get incorporated. I've got these beautiful smooth creamy mixture. We're gonna do 1 more quick little mix. Beautiful, turn that off. We don't wanna overmix it. So it's beautiful, creamy and all combined. So let's set this to the side right now. And we are going to move on to our dry ingredients. Let's mix these together. So, we got our flour here, let's add in the salt, and that baking powder, and just give this a nice toss, just to quickly mix that altogether. Great. And now we are going to introduce this into this. And as I've said, we're gonna do that gradually. So I'm gonna put my mixer back on just low and I'm gonna continue to do this until it's all completely combined and mixed. Let's turn that off. Okay. So what we're gonna do is I'm just kind of mix this with my hand because as you can see, it sort of got little crumbly which is fine. I just want it to be kind of mushed together because the next step is just to cut this in half. So this doesn't need to be exactly precise. I'm just going to grab 1/2 here. Set this one off to the side and just kind of mix it together. And now what I'm gonna do is form this into a little log, about 12 inches long and like 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Now this is because I'm not doing cut-out cookies. If you're doing cut-out cookies, you wouldn't want to do this part. You would skip this log part and just move on to the next step. So hold on just 1 second. This is only if you're doing regularly-shaped cookies, not cut-outs. So just form this. It's like you're making like a snake with Play-do or something. Okay. Alright. Looking good. Okay. Once I have this one all rolled up, we'll come right back and I'll take you to the next step. I've rolled our dough into these little logs, these little round logs and now they're ready to pop into the refrigerator. So we are going to chill them in the refrigerator, wrap in plastic wrap, for 3 to 4 hours or until the dough is firm enough to be sliced. Now remember earlier I said if you're doing cut-out cookies, what you would have done is just put together the little dough ball and then just wrap in refrigerated bag. You wouldn't be rolling yours out into a log like we're doing. So just wrap this up tightly, both little logs and then we're gonna pop them into the refrigerator and let it chill for 3 to 4 hours until they're ready to be sliced and then we'll come back and we'll pop them in the oven. Okay. So I'm going to unwrap this, but I'm going to leave the plastic wrap underneath because we are about to brush this. We've got slightly beaten egg white remember that we have before. By the way, if this kind of crumbles like this, that's fine. That's just a point that you'll cut on. No problem. You can just kind of like squeeze it back together. This is a more crumbly cookie. Okay. So I have a little brush here, a little basting brush, this is what I'm gonna use. You could use your fingers if you don't have a brush. It's no problem. But it's just sort of like painting. We're just going to paint this with the egg white until the entire thing is nice and coated because this will help give us like a nice golden brown finish that's also going to help our colored nonpareils over there stick the sugar cookie because we're not going to decorate just the top. These are going to just have the sides. You'll see in a second, the all-sugar cookie that's just lovely. So I'm gonna keep doing this getting both sides and we'll come right back, we move on to the next step. Okay. So this is all brush and wonderfully egg whitey. So now, we are going to take the nonpareils or if you had the colored sugar. And we are going to sprinkle as many as you want. This is so fun, it's like little circus colors, kind like the circus cookies, so fun. Okay. And then turn and roll it, let's move this over here turn and we're gonna get all the way around. Now of course if you were going to frost these cookies, this is just-- you would skip this stuff. You would not be sprinkling. Beautiful. I obviously as you can see like logs. That's sprinkles happening and let's turn it. Okay, beautiful. So see. We got now, just gonna do some extra because we will have some lost in transit. Okay. Beautiful So perfect. Adorable, adorable. And now the next step is just slice these. So I'm gonna slice them in like 1/3 of an inch little slices. I wanna make a lot of cookies here. And so we're just going to slice, slice, slice. And I'm just gonna keep going. And then what we're gonna do is lay these out here. Gonna give them like an inch between on the ungreased cookie sheet. So see how this is gonna look. It's so adorable. All the sides are going to have your little nonpareils on them or your coarse colored sugar, whatever you choose to use, rather than just the top. They're just so cute and so super festive. So I'm just going to keep lining these up and when I pop them in the oven like 375 degrees for 6 to 7 minutes. I want the bottom to be lightly, lightly, lightly brown. So I'm gonna check on them like 6 minutes. If they're ready I'm gonna pull them out and we'll see how they look. Okay. So our first batch of cookies is all done. They cooked in the oven for about 6 minutes. Look at the bottom. They got nice and golden brown. I transferred them to this wire rack so they can cool, and they're looking pretty good. We made these pretty tiny. We'll have a total of like about 60 cookies if you make them this small. You could of course make them a bit larger. You may have to just increase your cooking time if you do that. But there we go. It was so simple, so easy to do. Hopefully you know, reminiscent of your grandmother or something because indeed these are favorite old-fashioned sugar cookies. Thanks for watching. And for more great recipes and savings, visit us at recipe.com