I’m continuing to try recipes in Alice Medrich’s Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-your-Mouth Cookies book that I got for Christmas this year. Today I had a little more time for baking than usual so I decided to try the Vanilla Sugar Cookies found in the “Crispy” chapter of the book. Since the dough had to chill well, I made the dough the night before and did all the work of rolling and cutting the next day. These are definitely cookies for special occasions as they’re a lot of work. The cookies are very crunchy and have a really good vanilla flavor. They would stand up well to frosting, but I opted to sprinkle mine with coarse sugar. The dough did get soft very quickly, so I had to chill it again while each sheet of cookies baked. These are not cookies to be making in a hurry!
Vanilla Sugar Cookies
from Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich
makes about 90 2 1/2 inch cookies
Ingredients:
4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened
2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 T. vanilla extract
sugar for sprinkling
Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and mix together with a whisk. Set aside.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. On low speed, beat in the flour just until incorporated. Scrape the dough into a mass and knead it with your hands a few times until smooth. Divide the dough into 4 pieces and form each into a flat patty. Wrap and refrigerate until firm enough to roll, several hour or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Position racks in upper and lower thirds of the oven.
Remove one patty of dough from the refrigerator and let it sit at room temperature until it can be rolled but is still firm. It will soften as you work. Roll the dough between two sheets of wax paper until it is about 1/8 inch thick. If you get wrinkles in the wax paper, lift it off and smooth it. Turn the dough over once in a while and check the bottom as well.
When the dough is thin enough, slide it onto a cookie sheet and chill it while you work with the next patty of dough. Repeat until all the dough has been rolled out. Working with one rolled out dough piece at a time, unwrap and invert the dough onto your counter top. Using a floured cutter, cut out your dough shapes and transfer to a cookie sheet that has been lined with parchment paper. Place the cookies about 1 1/2 inches apart. If the dough gets too soft at any time, pop it back into the refrigerator. If desired, sprinkle the cookies with sugar.
Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through baking if baking more than one at a time. Bake until the cookies are just turning light brown on the edges. Let cool for a couple of minutes before transferring the baked cookies to racks to finish cooling.
