Making Sugar Cookies

               Sugar cookies are supposedly one of the easiest types of cookies to bake. In fact, when talking about her vanilla-almond sugar cookies, Bridget Edwards, author of Decorating Cookies 60+ Designs for Holidays, Celebrations & Everyday, says in her book, “This is my go-to sugar cookie recipe. I could make them in my sleep (and probably have)” (Edwards 22). I, however, lack the ability to follow baking directions correctly, so the first batch of cookies didn’t even make it into the oven. I’ve never been great at baking, but I was willing to give these vanilla-almond sugar cookies a try. The recipe I used for these cookies came directly from Edwards’ book.

Ingredients:

3 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup salted butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

¾ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

½ teaspoon pure almond extract

She also gave the option of leaving out the vanilla and almond extract for “a cookie that is all buttery-sugary goodness” (Edwards 23), and because I did not have either, I chose to do that. Acquiring all the ingredients was difficult to do at the time so I made this batch of dough with a friend who did have the rest of what we needed. After gathering the ingredients, the directions seemed fairly simple. You begin by whisking the flour and baking powder together and setting that aside. 

Then, using a stand mixing, combine the butter and sugar until it is fluffy, at which point you add the eggs and vanilla and almond extracts (if you are using them). This step was much more difficult since we did not have a stand mixer and had to rely on a hand mixer instead. We continued beating the ingredients together until the mixture reached what we thought was the right consistency.

The next step was adding the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients, which we did little by little until everything was combined. This is when we began to notice how wrong our dough looked. It was dry, crumbly, and falling apart. We flipped to the “troubleshooting” section of the book where we found the only answer to our problem was just to continue kneading the dough until it reached the right texture. I took my section of the dough and began kneading, but even after a very long time it didn’t get any better. I actually think it got worse. 

Even though this first try did not work out very well, I definitely plan on making them again for future blogs. What are some things I can do different next time to get more successful results?