I have exciting news for you all – After 42 years on this planet, I have finally achieved my goal in life!
I know what you’re saying to yourself. “Wow, I wish I could achieve my goal in life, maybe I should work harder!” Maybe you should. Because then you could be like me, 42 years old without a single care in the world, living the rest of my life free and easy because I’m no longer burdened by my life long goal of finding the perfect sugar cookie recipe.
I set this lofty goal for myself approximately 35 years ago, (but who’s counting,) when our wonderful, crafty neighbor, Mrs. Jones made all of the neighbor kids their own personalized cookies for Valentine’s Day. These weren’t just any sugar cookies. They had the perfect texture: moist but not mushy, and the flavor was like nothing I had tasted before. It was an experience straight out of the pages of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, where Charlie would take the tiniest of bites in order to savor every tiny morsel of his candy bar. Except in my case, I ate gigantic bites in a circular (heart shaped) motion, chomping it like I was a cookie-eating record player, only briefly pausing to admire my cursive name in the middle before shoving that in my mouth too.
And then it was gone. Forever.
I didn’t realize at that moment that I had just set myself up for 35 years of a hollow space in my stomach….I will go as far to say a hollow space in my soul, that could only be filled by experiencing that same amazing, perfect cookie joy that I experienced that day.
I have tried to replicate this cookie over the years. I even went so far as having my mom ask Mrs. Jones for her recipe. As with most wonderful desserts that come from the Jones kitchen, I think that the delicious results come from some special Jones magic and not just the recipe because my cookies were not even close.
Last year for Halloween I decided to do some Google’ing and see if a search for “Best Soft Sugar Cookie” would yield any winners. I tried two different recipes: one ended up dry and crumbly and the other was moist yet flavorless and neither did a great job of holding the shape of the cookie cutter that I used.
This year for Valentine’s Day, I decided to kick my search up a notch and went to the place where mommy notches can get no higher: Pinterest. I searched for “Best soft sugar cookie recipe” which resulted in approximately 8 zillion recipes (and an ad for Sriracha…which is amazing in its own way.)
Most of the recipes looked pretty similar to the ones I had already tried over the years but after some searching I narrowed it down to two recipes: one with sour creme and one with creme cheese. The deciding factor was “which of those two ingredients would I like to have leftovers of in my fridge?” So the creme cheese recipe won.
As with most things that happen in my house, cookie baking looks just like it does in all the magazines.
For example, just like how all the food I make is beige, all my cooking utensils are white. (No, I didn’t steal this picture from Martha Stewart, that’s all mine.) Fortunately what is not captured in the photo is that my mixer is 98% metal and 2% salmonella from leftover splashes of the last thing I baked.
And only the finest, mismatched, hand-me-down, vintage measuring cups will do.
I think that more food blogs should fess up and photograph themselves while they sample their work.
Fun fact: Almond extract does not actually appear to contain almonds. Almost as disturbing as when our dairy allergy friends informed me that boxed chocolate cake mixes and frosting do not contain dairy. The More You Know.
See….it looks just like when the pros do it!
Since I live in Texas, I’m more used to making biscuits than cookies so I may have gone a little overboard on the flouring of the work surfaces. However, the dough can be a little sticky so a little extra flour makes it much more manageable.
Especially after my first round of cut outs ended up in a cursing Instagram photo.
In the end, I was excited to see that the cookies looked amazing. They kept their shape beautifully that even passed the ‘black-diamond-of-difficulty’ cookie test of the Star Wars cookie cutters.
I have never managed to make any cookie with these where the details of their faces didn’t get all distorted and poofy.
But most importantly, they are delicious! And not just right out of the oven delicious. Delicious even the next morning without frosting on them!
They taste even more delicious after returning home from my son’s Pre-K Valentines party when I got to treat myself for surviving yet another party as class parent.
And of course a reward is in order for reaching my goal in life. That’s a pretty big deal. I guess that all there’s left to do now is put my feet up and enjoy the rest of these cookies.
To find this amazing, life-changing, goal-reaching recipe, please visit Lil’ Luna {all things good}
Her pictures are slightly prettier than mine, but if I can make these cookies taste amazing, anyone can.
Full Disclosure – (or I guess ‘No need for’ Disclosure) – I have no relation to Lil’Luna – She didn’t ask me to say great things about her cookies. But since I’m assuming that if her cookies are this good that the rest of her stuff is too, go check her out – She’s also on Facebook and Twitter.
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Once upon a time, Susanne Kerns was a Senior Account Director at an advertising agency working for two of the top brands in the world. Nine years ago she traded in her corporate life for a life as a stay at home mom, raising two of the best kids in the world. She started her blog, The Dusty Parachute as a way to dust off her online advertising skills and begin her job search. Instead, she now uses it as a way to spend lots of time on the computer so her kids think that mommy has a job.
Susanne’s essays have been featured in Scary Mommy, BonBon Break and Redbook and she is also a contributor in the books, It’s Really 10 Months, Special Delivery and Martinis & Motherhood – Tales of Wonder Woe & WTF?!
You can follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
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