GMA Recipe: Basic Butter Cookies

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Basic Butter Cookies
From GMA's Food Editor and author, Sara Moulton
December 12, 2003

Sara Moulton and Gourmet's food editors cut the workload for your busy holiday season. They keep things simple by offering a dozen holiday cookie recipes that can all be prepared from one basic butter cookie dough.

This same cookie dough recipe is used to make Brownie Squares.

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 and 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Garnish: coarse or sanding sugar*; or melted chocolate (see cooks' note, below)

Active time: 30 minutes; start to finish: 5 hours (includes chilling)

Directions

1. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl.

2. Beat together butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes in a standing mixer (preferably fitted with paddle attachment) or 6 minutes with a handheld. Beat in egg and vanilla. Reduce speed to low, then add flour mixture and mix until just combined.

3. Form dough into a 12-inch log (2 inches in diameter) on a sheet of plastic wrap and roll up dough in plastic wrap. Chill dough on a baking sheet until firm, at least 4 hours.

4. Put oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 375°F.

5. Cut enough 1/8 to 1/4 -inch thick slices from log with a heavy knife to fill 2 ungreased large baking sheets, arranging slices about 1 inch apart (chill remainder of log wrapped in plastic wrap). If garnishing with coarse sugar, sprinkle slices with it.

6. Bake cookies, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until edges are golden, 12 to 15 minutes total. Cool on sheets 3 minutes, then transfer with a metal spatula to racks to cool completely. Make more cookies with remaining dough on cooled baking sheets.

Cooks' notes:

Dough log can be chilled up to 5 days or frozen, wrapped in a double layer of plastic wrap, 1 month. If frozen, thaw dough in refrigerator just until it can be sliced.

   Instead of forming dough into a log and chilling, you can roll tablespoons of dough into 1 1/4-inch balls, then roll balls in finely chopped nuts (about 1 cup) and coarse sugar. Bake, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until bottoms are browned, about 15 minutes total.

   To garnish cookies with chocolate, melt 3 1/2 oz chocolate and cool slightly. Transfer to a heavy-duty sealable plastic bag and snip a 1/16-inch opening in 1 corner. Pipe chocolate evenly back and forth over cookies. Let chocolate set before storing cookies.

   Cookies keep, layered between sheets of wax paper or parchment, in an airtight container at room temperature 1 week.

*Coarse sugar is available at specialty foods shops.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

Copyright © 2003 Conde Nast Publications. All rights reserved. Originally published in Gourmet. Reprinted by permission.