Sugar Cookies... yummmmm!

Since I had so much response to my FB post about Halloween sugar cookies, I decided to repost my recipe for sugar cookies and poured fondant. My cookies usually just have simple decorations. I don't get really fancy like the "cookie decorators" out there, but these are oh sooo good. The trick to making really yummy sugar cookies is to not roll them out too thin, and do not overbake them (or any kind of cookie). I like my cookies soft, so they almost melt in your mouth. Another thing to assure wonderfully tasting cookies is to always use real butter. Nothing else will do but the real stuff here.

BEST SUGAR COOKIE RECIPE

Here is my sugar cookie recipe that I have used for many years. It is so yummy...soft and just sweet enough. They melt in your mouth. They are good just iced with buttercream frosting and sprinkled with cookie sprinkles, but when I want them to be really special, I dip them in fondant and then decorate them.  

3/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Cream butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until fluffy. Blend in flour, baking powder and salt. Cover and chill at least 1 hour. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Roll dough 1/4" thick on floured surface. Cut into shapes. Bake on parchment lined cookie sheet for 6-8 min. or until just set and barely brown on bottom. Do not overbake. Cool completely on rack. Ice with fondant or buttercream icing if desired. Makes 2 1/2 - 3 doz. cookies. 

Poured Fondant

This will be a bit difficult, because I never measure my ingredients for my poured fondant, so make sure you experiment on your family first to get the proper consistency.

Powdered sugar
Corn syrup
Flavoring (I usually just use vanilla or butter vanilla)
Warm water

I make the fondant in my KitchenAid mixer, but you can even mix this up by hand, as long as you take time to get all the sugar lumps out. Add powdered sugar to the bowl. How much will depend on how many cookies you have to dip. I normally fill my bowl approximately half way. Add about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of light corn syrup and desired amount of flavoring. Then, add warm tap water, a little at a time until your fondant is thin enough for dipping, but not so thin that you can see through it. Mix with flat beater on low speed until smooth. You do not want to add air bubbles to the fondant. With a little practice, you will know when you have the proper consistency. Now, put a cooling rack over a cookie sheet. As you dip the cookies, let the excess drip off, then using your finger, scrape off the edge of the cookie, and put on the cooling rack to allow to drip off any more excess fondant and set. Before the fondant sets, you can add sprinkles if desired, or make designs with colored fondant.

An alternative to dipping the cookies is to pipe a string border from buttercream with a #3 or #4 writing tip and then fill in with the fondant, using a toothpick to coax the fondant around the edges. I use a squeeze bottle filled with the fondant to fill in the top of the cookies. This gives your cookies a cleaner edge. These cookies never harden as much as cookies decorated with royal icing, but they do set up to the touch, and if you leave them set out for about a day (if they last that long) they will be slightly harder. 

Update to original post: I forgot to mention that I never use black food coloring unless absolutely necessary. All of the "black" that you see in my decorating is made with Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa. Just keep adding enough cocoa until your icing looks black. Sure tastes better than that nasty black food coloring.