This is my new favorite sugar cookie dough recipe. It has been adapted from the recipe in the Craftsy class Decorating Essentials: Designer Cookies. This recipe has a much better taste than my previous favorite, Favorite Sugar Cookies, but as you will see it has some issues with how they have you work with the dough. For that reason I am calling this my favorite recipe for making dough only. Refer to my very first post for refrigerating, rolling, cutting, freezing, and baking. For comparison purposes, this recipe makes about 24 cookies which is 1/2 of the older version.
Ingredients:
2 sticks salted butter, softened
3 oz (85 g) creamed cheese
3/4 (170 g) cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
3 cups (375 g) all purpose flower
Note: For best results, use a small kitchen scale to weigh your ingredients.
1) Mix butter and creamed cheese on medium for 2-3 minutes or until blended. Scrape the bowl.
2) Add the sugar. Blend on medium for a full 5 minutes to make it light and fluffy like in this picture. Then mix in the vanilla. Add the egg and mix on low. When the egg is mixed in, add the flour about 1 cup at a time on low. Over mixing the dough will make it tough.
3) Turn dough out and gently work in any flour left in the bowl if needed (I didn't need to). And this is the point where the new recipe and I part ways. I followed their directions but ran into problems with their methods. Next time I will refrigerate, roll, cut, freeze, and bake the dough as I have done in my old Favorite Sugar Cookies recipe.
Going on with this recipe, divide the dough in half and wrap in plastic wrap.
4) Put in refrigerator for a minimum of two hours.
5) Remove from refrigerator and allow to come to room temperature. This takes about 1 hour.
6) Roll the dough out on parchment paper between two 1/4" wooden dowels.
7) Move the parchment paper and dough to a cookie sheet. Cut out your shapes leaving at least an inch between them.
8) Remove the dough between the shapes.
9) I found that this method was problematic because the dough is not cold enough to make a sharp cut so removing the dough between the shapes left a ragged edge.
10) Bake for approximately 9-10 minutes or until you can see the beginning of golden brown edges like in this picture.
11) The most important thing about this, or any sugar cookie recipe, is that the cookies retain their shape. This recipe gets an A+ in that department.
12) 2 dozen cookies is not a lot so you may want to consider doubling it.
Note: When I bake I'm always trying out new things. This time I made some 3D printer cookie cutters shaped like strawberries. See how to do that in my post here. After cutting out the shapes, I cut off what would be the bottom of the strawberry, turned them upside-down and suddenly I had a rose. These are great when baked with a lollipop stick, which I did not do this time, but I did last week with a balloon shaped cutter and it turned out very nice.
