Boy, was this last week a blur of running around from morning til evening every day carting my older two kids to their respective schools, carting them back, errands, work, carting them to their activities, making multiple trips to almost every store within a 15 mile radius, planning a picnic, and feeling guilty for dragging my 2 (almost 3) yr old everywhere, so taking her to our local library for storytime.  This week should slow down a bit and I’m really looking forward to that. My daughter’s preschool had a Spring Social this past Saturday where current and new, incoming families join together for a little picnic and fun.  We had a great time with snow-cones, face painting, food, friends, and chicks hatching!  Yes, you read that right! Baby Chicks!  The preschoolers got to watch one of the chicks actually hatch out of it’s shell!  I must say, what impeccable timing, chicks!  The chicks’ due date had come and gone last Wednesday, so we were afraid they wouldn’t hatch and the kids would be disappointed.  At least they would get a heavy lesson on the ways life out of the experience, but the chicks decided to come so we were able to save that heavy life lesson for another day.  Not all chicks are fluffy and yellow as I had believed them to be, for these were black and cute and amazing to watch.

When I was at BYU for college (not so long ago… okay… it was many years back), I would oftentimes indulge in those soft, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth sugar cookies heaped with a generous slathering of pink (artificial) icing, topped with cute little sprinkles, and I must admit those indulges happened a little too often.  I still see copycat versions of these pink pillows of nostalgia at my local grocery store, and perhaps my taste buds have grown up, but now these cookies taste… *blah* to me.  That could also be the effect of actually looking at the list of ingredients and wondering ‘What in the world did I put in my body all those years? No wonder I’m…’

I’m not sure what they put into their cookies to make them so soft because I don’t think it’s possible to achieve that kind of softness without adding “other” ingredients into your dough.  But I’m ready with my go-to sugar cookies recipe whenever I catch myself eyeing those pink, frosted cookies made from “others” at the grocery store and this is one of the recipes I made for my daughter’s preschool’s Spring Picnic last Saturday.  This recipe uses regular all-purpose flour with no dough refrigeration time and the other one I like to use calls for cake flour and refrigeration time, which I don’t always have the patience for when I’m baking in a hurry; which is quite almost, always. So this recipe is my all-time go-to for pink, frosted, cut-out sugar cookies, and can’t forget the sprinkles to complete the look.  😉

The dough comes together beautifully for this recipe and, as I already mentioned, you don’t need to refrigerate the dough to roll-out and cut shapes.  Also, the dough doesn’t stick when you roll it out and the cookies actually hold their shape after being baked!  And did I mention that they taste delicious!  Let them sit overnight in an airtight container and you’ll get an entirely soft cookie.  They are great right out of the oven too.  What is there not to love about this recipe?!

Soft Cut-out Sugar COokies

• 1 cup butter, room temp
• 1 ¾ cups granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 5½ cups all-purpose flour

1. Preheat oven to 375ºF
2. In a large bowl, combine flour with salt and baking soda and mix, set aside.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together in a stand mixer with beater attachment until light and fluffy.
4. Add eggs one at a time and beat to incorporate.
5. Add vanilla and sour cream and beat to mix.
6. Add the flour mixture and carefully mix on lowest speed.  Add more flour (a tablespoon) at a time if sticky, but don’t add too much!
7. Roll out dough to 1/4″-1/3″ thickness and cut out in desired shapes
8. GREASE parchment paper on cookie sheets and bake 6-7 mins.
9. Let cool for 5 mins before transferring to cooling rack.

Fluffy Buttercream

• 1 cup butter, room temp
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• generous pinch of fine grain salt
• 1/4 cup heavy cream

1. Beat butter until light and fluffy
2. Add powdered sugar and vanilla and beat
3. Add salt and heavy cream and beat.
4. Tint to desired color and frost cooled cookies.

Thank you for reading and have another wonderful week, hopefully with some homemade sweetness along the way~

-Flora