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I have always had a serious love for baking. Its my love language. If I bake you something, it’s because you are so special to me. And I have always wanted to make those fancy sugar cookies that you see in bakeries, but mine always spread and turned out looking like the fat cousin of the cookie that I intended to make (ya feel me??).
After doing a ton of searching, I found this beautiful cookie blog, LilaLoa! Her stuff is fantastic, y’all, and her cookie recipe did NOT disappoint! The cookies stayed soft and chewy, even after I froze them, thawed them, and decorated them almost a full week prior to the party. No one likes a rock hard cookie. Well, maybe you do….but you’re weird. I kid, I kid.
It definitely took some practice, but I am beyond excited with the way that they turned out! I literally followed LilaLoa’s Recipe to a T and it was magical! (I am inserting it below, but want to give credit where it is due!)
First, I rounded up my ingredients and set them out:
I mixed according to the recipe (make sure you pay attention to the part about how to add the flour!), but instead of adding that last half cup of flour in the mixer to firm it up, I opted to put out my dough and knead the flour into it instead. I felt like it made it less lumpy, but maybe that’s just me! I love that you don’t have to chill this recipe before cutting, because ain’t nobody got time for that!
It’s super important to roll your dough to as uniform of a thickness as you can, so that your cookies don’t bake unevenly. I am ordering myself one of these rolling pins because they make that so much easier! I made sure I kept a thin layer of flour under the dough so that it didn’t stick to the counter once I cut them.
I personally like to get as many cuts into one roll-out as possible, so I typically do it like this and then peel the excess from around them before lifting to my pan. I did find that it is good to break up your dough into smaller batches and roll this way to keep things manageable. I also learned (the hard way during my trial run) that re-rolling a lot will make your cookies bubble a bit. If this happens, put a sheet of parchment paper over them right when you take them out of the oven and then place another cookie sheet the same size on top of it to flatten them out. I put a bag of brown sugar to add some weight. It definitely did not smash the cookie but it gave me a nice, flat surface to work with when the time came to decorate! After a few minutes you can lift it off and let them cool.
Once your cookies are cooled, you can either begin decorating right away, or you can freeze them! They hold up beautifully in the freezer! I made this particular batch for Addilyn’s birthday party about three weeks in advance and thawed them to decorate the week of. They were perfectly delicious and chewy!
I’ll be sharing the icing recipe that I used later this week, so stay tuned! Scroll on for the cookie recipe!
LilaLoa's Vanilla Sugar Cookie 2.0
Seriously go check her blog out!
INGREDIENTS:
- 1 cup slightly softened unsalted butter
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 4 (or 4 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.
- Cream the butter and both sugars together. If you have any brown sugar lumps, you should crush them up or pull them out. They make weird dents in your baked cookies.
- Add the eggs and the vanilla and mix thoroughly.
- Add the salt and baking powder and again with the mixing of the dough.
- Before you add the flour, let’s have a little chat. Different altitudes need different amounts of flour. Differences in humidity will the change the amount of flour you should add. Is there a storm coming? That changes things. Add only 4 cups to begin with. Then add additional flour 1/2 cup at a time until the dough is no longer sticky and pulls away from the side of the mixing bowl. (This happens at about 4 cups of flour for me…except in the winter time when it happens at 4 1/2 cups flour.) That’s when you should stop if you are going to chill the dough overnight, or just wait for another day to bake it. If you are going to roll it out right away, add another half of a cup of flour so it will be thick enough to move from the rolling out surface to your baking sheet.
- Bake at 350F. If you roll to 1/4″ thick, bake for about 7 minutes. If you roll to 3/8″ thick, bake for about 10-12 minutes.
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