Tackling My Fear of Making Cookies - The Dough

Egg & Vanilla

I really enjoy baking.  I like to make bars, brownies, cakes and cupcakes.  I like to make cute little food presentations and snacks.  Dip some Oreo's in candy melts?  I'm game.  But, I have always been a terrible cookie baker.

I don't really know what it is that I do wrong.  They sometimes taste bad, spread too much, burn, under-cook or just don't look presentable.  I have received suggestions like add baking soda, decrease baking powder, make sure the pan is cold, don't pre-heat the oven, use Parchment paper and so on!  Nothing has really improved my cookie skills.


Sugar Cookie Dry Mix

With that all being said, I have some time on my hands and I am going to tackle my cookie fears!  I just need 1 or 2 recipes that I can go to when cookies need to be made.

One of my favorite cookie blogs is The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle.  I decided to read all of her tips and FAQ.  Then, I followed her instructions for basic sugar cookies.  I would love to be able to frost these sugar cookies like a champ.  But, first I have to bake them and have them taste good.

I read all of the FAQs and the blog posts pertaining to basic sugar cookies.  I chose vanilla as my flavor.  I learned a new technique that involved a rolling pin and 2 dowels.  Using this method to roll out the dough allowed me to get more uniformly sized cookies.

I used a small spatula to transfer the cookies to the parchment paper.  This worked well.  I may try the offset spatula next time, as well.

This recipe made cookies that cut and transferred well.  But, I had to add a lot of flour in order to roll out the dough without it sticking to the rolling pin.  So, the cookies tasted a little gross because of too much flour.  They are the right consistency for frosted sugar cookies.

My decorating adventures will be part 2 of this series.