Tag: butter

Funny enough, last year when I was doing my cookie challenge, I never once did a butter cookie, and someone suggested I try making on, so here’s my attempt at a butter cookie.

To start things off, we need two sticks of butter, and 140 grams of sugar.

Add the sugar to the butter, along with a 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Run them in your stand mixer.

Once you’ve got the butter and sugar mixed up, add in the two egg yolks and 1/2 tablespoon of vanilla.

Also, on an unrelated note, I emptied out a container from Kirkland vanilla.

Next, you’ll need to measure out your flour. Luckily, we can measure out an exact amount of 283 grams. It’s always confusing when recipes tell you to “spoon and level 2 cups”. The weight makes it easier so there’s no discrepency.

Add it to your stand mixer as it is running, and make sure you have the cover on otherwise you’ll get flour all over the place. After the flour is mixed in, add 2 teaspoons of milk. If you feel it needs to be a bit softer, you can add a couple more.

Once the dough is ready, get your two cookie sheets and line them with some parchment paper. While that is being prepared, set the oven to 350F.

Now, for the part that I failed miserably at: putting it in a bag and piping it out.

I didn’t have the large enough tip for it to make the wonderful aesthetic of the cookies. When I extruded it out, it was about the thickness of a straw, and I didn’t feel like putting forth that kind of effort, so instead I took my trusty 1.5Tbsp cookie scoop and did it the old-fashioned way. Also, maybe don’t use a ziploc bag…

The oven was ready to go, and each sheet was baked for 16 minutes. With aluminum cookie sheets, and their inability to retain heat compared to their steel counterparts, I usually put the cookies in at the maximum, or add a couple of minutes.

Once the cookies have cooled off, it’s time to dip them in some chocolate. Luckily my past self is much smarter than my current self, and I had some melting chocolate ready to dip the cookies in.

Melt the chocolate, and dip each cookie halfway.

A few of the cookies broke when I dipped them in because they weren’t baked enough. They were pretty flimsy and so I had to get the spoon to pull them out safely.

In the end, here’s the result:

In the end, this is a pretty easy recipe to make. The only thing you might need is a kitchen scale to ensure that your measurements are accurate. If you’re going to melt chocolate for these cookies, I’d just use a bag of morsels from the grocery store instead of some sort of specialty thing like these melting chocolates. If you always have milk on hand, along with a bag of morsels, you should be able to make these fairly quickly. There’s no need to refrigerate the dough, so these can be made on impulse in very little time.

If you don’t have any piping mechanism, a cookie scoop works just fine, and they still come out amazing, despite my utter failure of my piping setup.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (226g, two sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 2/3 cup (140g) granulated sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 large egg yolks
• 1 1/2 tsp (1/2 tbsp) vanilla extract
• 2 cups (283g) all-purpose flour (scoop and level to measure)
• 2 – 4 tsp milk
• Chocolate or candy melts, optional

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment cream together butter, sugar and salt until combined.
3. Mix in egg yolks and vanilla.
4. Add flour and mix until crumbly then add in 2 tsp milk, if needed add in another 1 – 2 tsp milk for a more pipe-able consistency – add as little as possible for less spreading though.
5. Transfer to a 16-inch piping bag fitted with a very large open star tip (or just using your cookie scoop).
6. Pipe dough into rounds onto two ungreased baking sheets
7. Bake one sheet at a time in preheated oven until golden brown on bottom, about 12 – 16 minutes.
8. Let cool on baking sheet 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container. 

Notes:

• If you’d like to dip in chocolate or white chocolate, melt 10 oz chopped chocolate, chocolate melts, or white chocolate melts in a microwave safe bowl on 50% power in 20 second intervals until melted and smooth. 
• Dip half of cookies into chocolate let excess run off (while also brushing some off bottom across bowl) then transfer to a sheet of parchment paper. Immediately add sprinkles if using then let set.

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