Thursday, May 13, 2010

Prettiest sugar cookies, made easy

There are rigorous guidelines for cookies appropriate for tea parties. They should be dainty, so you can eat them without looking unladylike. They should be decorative, because they are going to be displayed and oohed and aahhed over. Also, they should be relatively easy to make, because you probably have a million other things to do, including somehow making yourself look ladylike enough to attend said tea party.

Bam.

tea cookies
{tea cookies}

A sugar cookie recipe that I love (not overly sweet) + the genius linzer cookie cutter which makes this relatively foolproof + boysenberry jam.

How to make cookies without spending 3 straight hours in the kitchen  - aka obsessive time management for people who work full time and don't love being stuck in the kitchen till 1 am
Wednesday: Make dough, wrap in saran, leave in fridge.
Thursday: Remove dough from fridge, let it soften up while you eat dinner. Roll it out and cut cookies, placing them on a baking sheet as you go. Stick baking sheet in freezer for about an hour. Once frozen, transfer cookies to a Ziploc bag. Put them in the freezer again (you can actually do this up to a month ahead of time, if you make sure you push all the air out of the bag and seal it tightly).
Friday: Bake cookies (side advantage to the freezer method is that you get beautiful, crisp shapes instead of blobs) and let them cool.
Saturday: Sandwich cookies together with a bit of jam in the middle, eat.

The cookies in the back are Deb's brownie roll-out cookies, sandwiched with a bit of ganache in the middle. Tasty, even for a non chocolate lover. 

15 comments:

  1. Wow, I love the idea of freezing them after they are cut out. What a great time saver. I am going to try that for sure. Thank you!

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  2. My friend's Croatian grandmother makes cookies similar to these, but I think she uses a different filling. They are the most delicious things I have ever eaten.

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  3. my goodness... those look delicious!

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  4. i love linzer cookies - i will have to try the freezer trick

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  5. i often get overwhelmed my the amount of work required for sugar cookies, but this makes it seem so doable!

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  6. love this. When you take the cookies out of the freezer to bake them, do you let them thaw first?

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  7. @ Anon - Nope, it's actually better if you DON'T let them thaw. Just pull them straight out of the freezer and pop them in the oven. You'll need to bake them just a little bit longer. The recipe for these called for 7 - 12 minutes baking time and I found that 12 minutes was just about right. I'm sure if they were room temp the baking time would have been closer to 7 minutes.

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  8. that is so great. Thanks for sharing (as always!)

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  9. I love this post! Thank you, they don't seem so overwhelming anymore. Perfect!

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  10. Oh boy....these look amazing. I may just try making them this weekend. They look so tasty.
    Thanks for the blog post.

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  11. These cookies look BEAUTIFUL... as if they were store-bought! Wow!!
    Thanks for sharing your time-saving tips! I'm always trying to be more efficient in my baking!!

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  12. The sugar cookie recipe link no longer works, does anyone have that recipe? What thiness should the dough be rolled out to? Also, does anyone know what temperature to bake at. No oven temperature is listed.

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    1. Ugh! This is why I hate linking to Martha Stewart - they always move/delete recipes. Sorry about that! I'm pretty sure that it was this recipe I was using - http://www.marthastewart.com/966161/ideal-sugar-cookies

      All the info re: thickness, oven temp, etc is in the recipe.

      Hope that helps!

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