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Chocolate Sugar Cookies + Sugar Cookie Bars + Sugar Cookie Fail

Chocolate Sugar Cookies

Recipe taken from here

Now as mentioned time and time again I love sugar cookies. In the past couple months I have tried quite and saved quite a few different recipes for sugar cookies. Time and time again no matter how good the sugar cookie may be I keep going back to these. I just love everything about it. It's super soft, thick, the right amount of sugar, fluffy, just perfect. However, I have quite a few sugar cookies that are on my list to try before Christmas. I found some with yeast, some with sour cream, some with cream of tartar, other's with copious amounts of flour while some have less, etc... One sugar cookie recipe I did try this weekend however is a little different than your average sugar cookie and that was a chocolate sugar cookie.

I wasn't too interested in this cookie again because of the chocolate but I figured there are some flavours that are just a hit with certain people, and chocolate is definitely one of them. If you're a chocolate fan it seems that anything with chocolate in it draws your eyes to it. Me it's cake and ice cream. Last week for instance... I'm going to sound like the biggest pig of life but I don't care... last week the caterer's brought cakes in for lunch (they usually do every day) but for some reason I had giant munchies for cake and just COULDN'T stop no matter how hard I tried. Both Thursday AND Friday I had EIGHT pieces of cake. YES EIGHT. Oh my goodness I was so embarrassed, I went up so many times I eventually got my mom to go up for me because seriously I looked like such a glutinous pig.

Anyways... these cookies seemed to do a disapearing act at my house this weekend. To be honest, I feel as though for MY standards I overcooked them by about a minute, and that one minute does a lot for me. I really don't like crunchy cookies, if I'm craving a crunchy cookie it would be something towards those rainbow chipit Mr. Christie cookies or those maple leaf cookies, nothing else. When I make my cookies they have to be pretty much on the edge of just not being raw. I was going to bring the chocolate sugar cookies into work but ughh... nothing to bring in. So, with that being said, definitely a hit, especially with the chocolate lover. Would I make this cookie as part of my Christmas cookie tin collection? Absolutely, not for me of course, but Christmas isn't about yourself so hey try it out!


Ingredients:
  • 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar, plus a few tablespoons for decoration
  • 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp room-temperature, unsalted butter
  • 1 large egg
Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

In a food processor or electric mixer, combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar. Add the butter and then the egg on low speed, or while pulsing. Continue mixing until dough comes together.

Measure a couple of table spoons of sugar into a small bowl. Roll about a tablespoon of dough between your hands to form a ball, then roll the dough in the bowl of sugar, coating the outside. Place on a parchment paper or Silpat lined baking sheet approximately 2 inches apart and slightly flatten the dough with your hands. Bake for 9-10 minutes. Allow cookies to cool for 3 to 4 minutes on the baking sheet, then place on a wire rack to cool completely.

Sugar Cookie Bars

Recipe changed sort of from here

These sugar cookie bars have been all over the internet and have wanted to make them since I first saw the recipe, quite a few months ago. You know how much I love sugar cookies, but I usually keep them simple, i.e. rolled in sugar. You know I'm not the biggest fan of frosting, but these are REQUIRED to have icing on them. Seriously it just makes their taste even more beautiful than it already is. I still made it a pretty scarce frosting ratio, when you see these on the internet the ratio of frosting to cookie is sometimes more frosting, to me that just screams out cavities.

This has always been a childhood comfort food to me because of my summer camp. I did make these in the summer, I know the summer has passed, and I really should have posted this long ago, but I was so lazy to make a write-up about it, I really don't know why, but I'm finally getting around to it so that's all that counts right? When I ate this bar I was so smitten. I seriously couldn't keep the smile off my face, it was seriously plastered. From the second I started frosting these babies up the smile curled and curled, (if you can imagine the Grinch when he starts stealing the presents and his grin starts becoming maniacal? Yeah... that's what I had... I really must have looked like a crazy.) The colours were beautiful, the taste was insanely delicious and the mess on my fingers covered in sprinkles, I couldn't even be upset, I was just so overcome with joy.

Whoever thought of making a sugar cookie into a bar form is a complete GENIUS. This makes the bar so so rich. It's soft, so you have to be careful because it does crumble (but I think that just screams delish right?). They are buttery and the frosting oh baby. This recipe is seriously so simple, you don't have to chill the dough, no rolling, you just pound it with your fist in a pan, and shove'er in the stove, eeeeea-zaaay.

This really is the perfect recipe, and if you haven't tried it yet, make sure you try this out. Stop what you are doing and seriously take a few minutes of your day to make this marvelous dessert!

Ingredients:
  • 1 cup butter, room temperature
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 5 cups flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing after each egg. Add vanilla and mix well.

In a separate bowl combine flour, salt, baking soda and stir with a whisk to combine. Add to wet mixture and mix just until combined. Spread on a greased baking sheet (use a 13 x 18 pan).

Bake for 10-15 min, until light golden brown or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely and frost.

Frosting:
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 4 cups powdered sugar
  • 5 Tbsp milk
  • Food coloring (if desired)
Directions:

For frosting combine butter and cream cheese until smooth and creamy. Add vanilla and salt. Add powdered sugar in 1-2 cup increments until combined, then add milk a little at a time and mix until smooth and spreading consistency. You may not need all the milk! Spread over cooled cookie bars.


The tale of a FAILED Sugar Cookie

Recipe adapted from here - I feel as though I shouldn't post this recipe since I've spoken so poorly about it, but maybe someone could give me some idea as to why it failed so much or if someone else wants to attempt it for themselves and see.

As I mentioned I've been on a mission to find the perfect sugar cookie recipe, and still I keep going to back to the one posted above, however, those sugar cookie bars are definitely an awesome competition. As I had mentioned above as well, I found a recipe for a sugar cookie recipe using yeast. Well, I was really really intrigued by this recipe, and I knew by the end of the week I was going to try my hand and attempting them.

Well, Wednesday night I made the dough, I let it sit over night, and whipped up the batch when ready. The next day I took out the dough and started rolling it out. Let me tell you, this was not fun, no not at all. Even with additional flour it clung onto my rolling pin and the cutting board for dear life, seriously, it held on with all it had and wouldn't let go. When using the cookie cutter, it didn't want to let go of that either. This definitely resulted in an unpleasant experience. I continued however, I was really excited for this recipe and I wanted to give them to my cousin who... is, well, in the hospital. Unfortunately, that isn't happening, not this recipe at least.

I had read this recipe a couple times before attempting it because my head couldn't wrap itself around the concept of yeast. I did however change it a bit... I decided not to add the few drops of citrus and in exchange add one vanilla bean, I'm not sure if this is what POSSIBLY might of ruined the recipe, since maybe it needed some citrus to do some weird-sciencey thing with the yeast, I don't know maybe someone out there could help me with that one... but regardless. As I read through it though I didn't realize UNTIL I actually had to put it in the oven, the duration of the time these are supposed to be spent in the oven, and the degrees to which they're supposed to be baked at as well. After about ten minutes in, I opened the oven, they smelt good, but there was so much leaked butter from the cookies on the pan it looked like a swamp. Really what these "cookies" were looking like were NOT cookies at all, no no no, they looked like BUTTER CROISSANTS. Considering the amount of butter, yeast and flour in it is no surprise to me that they came out like that. I took them out after thirty-five minutes of them being in the oven. I was not impressed at all, even fresh out of the oven they were horrid. It seriously was just a flakey piece of bread, as stated, a butter croissant, if I wanted a croissant I would either make my way to Tim Horton's or I would go in the kitchen and whip myself up a batch, but that wasn't the case. Giving these sugar cookies, the label "best" is sacrilege. Needless to say I will NEVER be making these again and they were DEFINITELY NOT the best sugar cookie out there.

Enjoy your sugar induced coma ;)

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