Recipe: Sugar Cookies by Ricardo Cuisine

Everyone knows that Christmas isn’t Christmas without some classic Sugar Cookies. So naturally, the elf and I decided to take another stab at a simple recipe by Ricardo Cuisine…only, we added our own twist to the icing.

To make our sugars cookies, we made sure that we had the following:

Ingredients:

• 2 ½ cups of unbleached all-purpose flour
• ¼ cup of cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1 pinch of salt
• ¾ cup of unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 2 eggs

Then in a mixing bowl, we combined the flour, the cornstarch, the baking powder, and a pinch salt…which in case you’re wondering, is actually just as much salt as you can grab between your forefinger and your thumb and no more!

In another bowl, we threw together the sugar, the vanilla, and the unsalted butter (that we microwaved to make soft). Then, one by one, we added in the eggs. Now, I used a whisk, but like I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, you can use an electric mixer if you find it easier (though a good ol’fashioned whisk does the job just the same!).

Not pictured: the sugar…again!

Once that was done, we mixed in our dry ingredients and watched as our dough slowly began to take shape (I ended up abandoning my whisk and just used my hands to do this).

Now, the directions on the recipe suggested molding the dough into two disks, but being the rebel I am (kidding!) I left it as is and put it in the fridge. The dough only needs to be refrigerated for an hour, but I did leave it in there overnight so if you are short on time, or are baking in advance, it won’t affect the outcome.

So a night and some part of the day later, we pulled the dough out of the fridge and let it thaw out a little (not a lot…maybe like five minutes) because it was a little hard. Then with our rolling pin we rolled the out our dough and used our cookie cutters to make some fun holiday shapes. And since we used medium sized cookie cutters we were able to make about 30 delicious cookies!

To get the best results, bake your cookies at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes.

Once our cookies were baked in all their yummy goodness, they were ready to be decorated. And this is where the fun begins—the icing! All you need to make your icing is:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup icing sugar
• Some milk

Yup, it’s that simple. Most people recommend Royal Icing, but I personally don’t like adding in a raw egg (even if it’s just the whites). Our method basically just requires you to take the icing sugar and mix in a little bit of milk, adjusting the ratio till you get the right consistency. And if the mixture feels too runny, try letting it sit for a while since it does become more dense with time.

After that, comes the best part—the decorating! We ended up using the back of spoons and toothpicks to make some really funky designs and had a lot of fun doing it!

So there you have it, another really easy holiday recipe that just about anyone can make!

To try more Ricardo Cuisine recipes you can visit the Ricardo website here: www.ricardocuisine.com

-@GirlontheProwl