Sugar Cookies - I'm getting better at decorating

This recipe is surprisingly simple. It's just your basic vanilla sugar cookie recipe. The frosting is something I've experimented with and found to be both tasty and aesthetically pleasing. It's basically a butter cream, but instead of butter I use white chocolate as the fat. That way, if you frost a warm cookie or slightly warm the frosting itself, it spreads easily, dries smoothly, and has a slight shine to it. Ah, dumb luck, you're my favorite sous chef.

Vanilla Sugar Cookies

For the Cookies:

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar*

1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 2/3 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

*This was the first time in recent memory I've found myself without brown sugar. However, I remembered a helpful hint - for 1 cup of light brown sugar you can substitute 1 cup white sugar plus about 2 tbsp molasses. Now, I'm much more likely to have brown sugar around than I am molasses. Luckily, my roommate happened to have some, and the recipe was saved.

Cream the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg, followed by the vanilla. In a separate bowl sift the bread flour, baking powder, and salt. Slowly add in 2 or 3 additions to the butter mixture until it forms a stiff dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and gather into a ball. Press the ball into a rectangle and cut into 4 equal pieces. Wrap each piece in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours or up to 1 one day. At this point, you can also freeze the dough for about 3 - 5 months.



Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Roll the dough out to about 1/4-inch thickness. (I've seen many recipes that make thinner cookies, but this dough benefits from being on the thicker side. When in doubt, err on the thick side.) Cut the dough using cookie cutters into whatever shapes you like, and bake, on a parchment lined baking sheet, for about 12 minutes or until just beginning to brown around the edges. You don't want to over bake these cookies - they should be more soft than crisp.

For the Frosting:

2 oz white chocolate
2-3 tbsp cream

1 1/4 cups confectioner's sugar
1/4 cocoa powder*

*I used Hershey's dark cocoa to make something close to black frosting - replace the cocoa with confectioner's sugar if you don't want chocolate flavored frosting and don't worry, the white chocolate taste, while noticeable, is not overpowering.

Melt the white chocolate with the cream in a bowl set over simmering water. Once melted, stir in the confectioner's sugar. The frosting should be thin, but it should thicken as it cools. If necessary add more confectioner's sugar and let it cool to see how thick it gets. For spreading purposes you can always re-warm the frosting in a bowl set over simmering water - in fact I'd recommend it as the frosting acquires a pleasant sheen as it cools.

Frost the hell out of the cookies. I actually used some fondant in order to make Space Invaders. This was only 1/4 of the dough since I was experimenting and wouldn't want to ruin the entire batch with terrible decorations. I think it turned out well over all - oh, and of course they were delicious ;)