Sometimes, I am blessed to find that I have an entire day to myself with no plans. These days are few and far between, but Saturday just happened to be one of them. I mean, I had plans to go to the Easter Vigil mass that night, needed to run a few errands in preparation for my family's Easter brunch the next day, and opted to sleep in a bit rather than go to my Jazzercise class, but still... that left me roughly 9 hours where I was both free and awake. I can't even remember the last time that happened!
Rather than clean my car (both the inside and outside desperately need it), finally take down my Valentine's decorations, put away my clean laundry (which has been piling up for weeks - I'm pretty good about having clean clothes, but terrible at putting them away), reorganize my kitchen (I recently got some new bar-ware that won't fit in the cabinets and is taking up valuable counter space), mop my kitchen floor (which is currently is covered with a fine layer of goo), finally make some pillows for Kirsten (they were supposed to be her Christmas gift, but I haven't gotten around to making them yet - I'm the worst), Windex the physics homework and sentence diagrams off my mirror (my friends are pretty cool at parties), or put away any of the crap (figurative crap) that is covering my dining room and bedroom, I opted to spend the day doing the least helpful but still technically productive thing I could imagine: making cookies.
 |
| Which I now need to cheer me up after typing out that list of stuff I still need to do. |
Even though my brother-in-law is lactose intolerant and my parents are usually on some crazy diet, I thought it would be fun and festive to make sugar cookies for our Easter Sunday brunch!
I've always loved the idea of decorating cookies (it's why I have an entire drawer of cookie cutters), but have never been able to make a batch that didn't taste terrible. At best, my sugar cookies would be edible but bland and just not worth it... and I don't even want to talk about at worst. My chocolate chip cookies are usually pretty tasty, and I can make a mean carrot cake cupcake, but something about the sugar cookies would just go terribly awry every time.
Until recently, that is.
In December, I went to a St. Nicholas Day party that was having a baking contest. I didn't participate, but my friend Augusta brought these amazing sugar cookies. They were delicious and had this awesome thin frosting on them. I don't remember who won the contest, but those cookies should have taken the cake (ha!). After I probably creeped her out by being a little too into the cookies, she was nice enough to give me the recipe! Even better, she was also nice enough to allow me to share the recipe with you!
Augusta's Sugar Cookies
Makes about 5-6 dozen (Unless you make yours extra thick like me... then you get about 3 dozen)
Ingredients:
- 1 cup butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 3 eggs
- 3 3/4 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 2 tsp. cream of tartar
- 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
- Cream together butter and sugar.
- Add eggs and vanilla; blend well.
- Sift (or whisk) together flour, salt, soda, and cream of tartar.
- Add the flour mixture gradually to creamed mixture.
- Chill dough.
- Roll out to 1/4 inch thickness on floured pastry cloth. Cut with cookie cutters.
- Bake 6 to 8 minutes at 425 degrees F.
This was my second time making these cookies, and this new recipe has served me very well. I especially liked this batch, because unlike last time, I didn't burn any of them (one of my cookie sheets is permanently covered with heart-shaped scorch marks from when I used the very bottom oven rack)!
 |
| Hmm... something is missing. I guess it's time to dress them up! |
Frosting
Ingredients:
- 2 cups confectioners sugar
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- Dash salt
- Heavy cream
- Combine the sugar, vanilla, and salt.
- Beat cream in gradually until frosting reaches the desired consistency.
- Augusta's Notes:
- It takes about 2-3 batches of frosting per cookie recipe, depending on how much frosting you use.
- Even a few drops of food coloring can make the frosting runnier, so you might want to leave it a little stiffer than you'll ultimately want so that it works out once you mix in the colors.
 |
| My parents gave me these, as well as a cake decorating kit, for my birthday last year! |
 |
| Quack! |
 |
| Attention potential suitors: daisies are my favorite flower. Daisies and roses. |
 |
| A small sampling of the whole lot. |
After I finished decorating all the bunnies, flowers, ducks, and other bunnies, I still had a fair amount of icing left over. As a result, I may have gone overboard decorating the last butterfly I had.
 |
| The Mighty Monarch! |
 |
| "You see, just like the flawless monarch butterfly from which I take my name, the Monarch has many ways to sting." |
WHILE I CRAFTED: I listened to my She & Him Pandora station.
No comments:
Post a Comment