This Sugar Cookie Recipe From Willa Jean Will Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth and Spread Holiday getaway Cheer

Is there any a lot more ideal dessert at Christmastime than the basic sugar cookie? The confection is scrumptious, of course, but also fun to make: you can minimize them into trees, stars, or sleighs, and festively frost them any which way. They satisfy your sweet tooth and distribute holiday getaway cheer.

Kelly Fields would know. The proprietor of Willa Jean Bakery, she sells a lot more than 10,000 cookies a 7 days from her New Orleans store. (Sure, they are truly that excellent: in 2019, Fields won the James Beard Award for Superb Pastry Chef.) So when she published her critically lauded cookbook, The Great E-book of Southern Baking, she manufactured positive to element lots of cookies, which include the recipe for her signature sugar cookie. “These are pretty much an all-event cookie for celebrating,” she states.

Whilst events are out of the query this December, baking scrumptious treats (even if it’s just for a person or two) is an uncomplicated way to make holidays experience, well, like the holiday seasons. Underneath, we share Fields’s recipe. It can make 48—which is a ton presently. But, as Fields clarifies, “If you really don’t want it all, leftovers freeze genuinely properly and can be saved for the future holiday break cooking-decorating bonanza.”

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

Cookie Dough

5 cups all-function flour, as well as more for dusting

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 1⁄4 cups unsalted butter, at space temperature

1 1⁄4 cups granulated sugar

3 ounces cream cheese, at place temperature

1 egg, at place temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Royal Icing

2 egg whites

1⁄2 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 cups powdered sugar, sifted

2 tablespoons drinking water

Instructions

1. Make the cookie dough. In a substantial bowl, whisk jointly the flour with the baking powder and salt. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or in a substantial bowl working with a handheld mixer, product the butter and sugar on medium-significant velocity until finally light and fluffy. Mix in the product cheese right until merged. Minimize the velocity to low and slowly but surely conquer in the egg and vanilla, incorporating very well. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Combine in the dry elements on reduced velocity until a dough kinds.

2. Switch the dough out on to a do the job area and knead it a number of instances by hand. Divide the dough into two equal parts and wrap each and every piece in plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough right until all set to roll out, at minimum 15 minutes or up to right away. You can also freeze the dough for up to 1 thirty day period.