Friday, December 09, 2011

all sugar cookies are not equal

i made these sugar cookies with ben on day 2. they were reported to be the "best sugar cookies ever". she gives very specific directions in regards to the flour: "it's important to correctly measure your flour or you will end up with a dry, crumbly dough. Never, ever use your measuring cup to scoop up the flour. Use a regular sized spoon and spoon the flour into the cup and then level it off with a knife." i read this step, rolled my eyes at "bakers" and scooped my flour with the measuring cup. i had a dry, crumbly mess. it was so frustrating but i managed to get it rolled out and get some cookies out of it. sure, they were good cookies but i didn't feel they were worth that frustration. a sugar cookie is a sugar cookie, right?

not so.

today, i made a different sugar cookie recipe. it was fast and easy. the dough was perfect. i baked them up and right away i could see a difference. they were puffy and didn't hold their shape like the other ones. they were kind of a little tasteless and definitely in need of icing whereas the above cookies never got iced and we still ate them ALL very quickly. these are far inferior to the first recipe.

it looks like i will have to try the first recipe again and this time, i will follow the directions. and even if i still get a crumbly dough, i will know that the work to roll and re-roll is worth it.

3 comments:

LaelDyck said...

Please let us know how it goes the 2nd time around!

theRachel said...

You're probably going to also roll your eyes at me for this comment, but here goes: the way the gal instructs you to measure flour in the first recipe is actually the way you should always measure flour for baking. Folks who are even more hardcore do baking by weights, as you have even more accuracy that way. But for the most part I always just scoop the flour from my Tupperware Carry All (!!) to the measuring cup - it only takes a few extra seconds and ensures you're not compacting a bunch of extra flour in there resulting in crumbly cookies. Also...if you consider how much time you would've saved doing that the first time around (since your first batch wasn't great, and you've attempted even another batch), it's definitely a time saver! Ohhh baking, can be so tedious, but delicious!

Ben S. said...

i was actually thinking of you, rachel, when i rolled my eyes. haha. thanks for the tips.