Old Fashioned Sugar Cookie Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why put cream of tartar in sugar cookies? ›

Cream of tartar makes cookies chewy, as it precludes the sugar in the dough from crystalizing, which would lead to crispiness (ie: the opposite of chewiness).

Often flavored with vanilla, sugar cookies are usually rolled out and cut into shapes using a cutter. They have a high ratio of flour to butter, giving them a sturdier, snappier constitution which means they are well suited to being decorated.

Take plain sugar cookies up a notch with exciting mix-ins like chocolate chips, rainbow sprinkles, toasted chopped nuts, chopped dried fruit or M&M's. Add these after blending your butter and egg into the sugar cookie mix.

The name Nazareth cookie came from the people of Nazareth, Pennsylvania who came from Germany. The cookie later took on other names in other countries. In England they were called sugar biscuits as well as jumbles.

The powdered sugar in the recipe helps absorb moisture from other ingredients, giving the cookies a unique bumpy looking appearance and an extra tender and chewy texture.

Baking Powder

Baking powder is a good cream of tartar substitute for cookies because it is synergistic with baking soda. You'll need 1.5x the amount of baking powder substitute for the cream of tartar called for in the recipe. Baking powder is a great cream of tartar replacement because it doesn't impart any flavor.

In that role, white sugar aerates the dough when creamed with butter for thick and puffy cookies. Brown sugar, meanwhile, is dense and compacts easily, creating fewer air pockets during creaming—that means that there's less opportunity to entrap gas, creating cookies that rise less and spread more.

It is not recommended to substitute powdered sugar for granulated sugar. Since powdered sugar has a much finer texture, and it contains a small percentage of cornstarch to prevent caking, substituting can give you unexpected results. Q.

Over-working the dough yields a tough cookie, which is not at all what you want. The very best sugar cookies are soft and tender. → Follow this tip: One of the keys to great sugar cookies is mixing the dry ingredients only until they're just incorporated, and not a second longer.

Just roll the dough into one inch balls and then coat them in equal parts cinnamon and sugar. Then I press them gently with a glass before baking them according to the directions on the package. That's it!

Why are they called cowboy cookies? ›

Some claim cowboy cookies hail from Texas, a state many cowboys call home. Others say the treats were named for their ability to withstand long days in saddlebag. Whatever its origin, the combination of oats, chocolate, pecans, and coconut is undeniably delicious.

The Girl Scouts often experiment with citrus-flavored cookies, and Savannah Smiles enjoyed a particularly long run. Dusted in powdered sugar and packed with lemon zest, they were named after Savannah, Georgia (where the Girl Scouts began) and the Brownie Smile song.

Let's have a hearty hip-hip-hooray for the German Protestants, who settled in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and invented the early sugar cookie. Their crumbly cookie made with butter and shaped into round or keystone shapes were a sweet hit from their formation in the late 1700s.

On the other hand, cream of tartar on its own is often included in royal icing recipes, as one of its key functions is to stabilize whipped egg whites. (It's also used to stabilize whipped cream and to prevent sugar syrups from crystallizing.)

The cream of tartar also makes the preparations softer and lighter, as it inflates leavened products without weighing them down: therefore it is excellent for making biscuits, cakes, croissants but also bread, savory pies and other baked products that have a good leavening.

Lemon juice works as a good substitute in any recipe that requires a leavening agent (any recipe that has baking soda in it). All you'll need to do is double the amount of cream of tartar, and then use that much lemon juice.

To help cookies keep their shape, freeze them! I freeze each batch of cut-out cookies for 5 to 10 minutes before baking.