Sugar Cut Out Cookie - Made With Fresh Milled Flour - Secret Family Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the best flour for sugar cookies? ›

Sugar Cookie Ingredients

Flour– use regular all-purpose flour! Baking soda and baking powder– make sure they are fresh!

Adding too little flour can cause cookies to be flat, greasy, and crispy. Most recipes assume you'll use all-purpose, but if you want a lighter, crumblier cookie texture, choose one with a lower protein content such as cake-and-pastry flour. Baking soda helps cookies spread outward and upward while cooking.

Baking powder simply adds carbon dioxide to the equation, providing a more forceful pressure that encourages a dough to spread up and out. Without the well-developed elasticity of a bread dough, the strands of gluten in cookies would sooner snap than stretch, cracking along the surface.

Once the edges develop a golden hue, you've gone too far. While overcooked sugar cookies are certainly still palatable, they'll be hard and crunchy, instead of soft and chewy. → Follow this tip: Pull the cookie sheet from the oven as soon as they've set and gained some color, but not too much.

All-Purpose Flour: The Versatile Choice

This balanced protein level makes it versatile enough to produce both soft and chewy cookies as well as slightly crisp ones. If you're looking for a safe bet or are new to cookie baking, all-purpose flour is your go-to option.

But is sifting flour necessary? That depends. Sifting flour is recommended for some desserts where the goal is light, delicate, and fluffy results (think angel food cakes, sponge cakes, and chiffon cakes). However, sifting flour isn't a must for desserts that are chewy or crisp, like cookies.

Mixing Butter & Sugar

If your butter is under mixed, it won't have the air pockets to hold it's shape. If it's over-mixed, the air pockets decrease in size and are unable to hold their shape in the oven—causing your cookies to spread. It's best to cream butter and sugar on medium speed for 2 to 3 minutes.

Undermixed butter and sugar looks gritty and chunky, which can lead to dense cookies and cakes. It is possible to overmix the butter and sugar. If you overmix, the butter will separate out of the mixture and it will be grainy and soupy. Be sure to stop once your butter becomes light and fluffy.

The lower the sugar, the less cookies spread, the drier/more crumbly they are. Cookies with less sugar taste less sweet, of course. But beyond that, their flavor also becomes flat; sugar is a flavor enhancer much like salt is.

However, if you're in a pinch, the substitution is one teaspoon baking soda equals three teaspoons baking powder. Baking soda is also much stronger than baking powder and, by trying to provide enough leavening, you may wind up with an unpleasant metallic, salty taste in the final baked product.

Is baking soda or baking powder better for cookies? ›

Baking soda is typically used for chewy cookies, while baking powder is generally used for light and airy cookies. Since baking powder is comprised of a number of ingredients (baking soda, cream of tartar, cornstarch, etc.), using it instead of pure baking soda will affect the taste of your cookies.

If you accidentally add baking soda instead of baking powder to baked goods, they won't rise because there is not enough acid. To fix this, add about one tablespoon of white or apple cider vinegar for every half teaspoon of baking soda to the liquids before mixing with the dry ingredients.

On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the sugar cookie dough to ¼-inch thick. Cut out shapes as desired, transfer to prepared baking sheets, and bake cookies until set but still pale, 10 to 12 minutes. Cook for 5 minutes on the baking sheets, then transfer to a cooling rack. Cool completely before decorating.

Refrigerating the dough allows the flour to fully hydrate and helps to make the cookie dough firmer. Firm dough prevents the cookies from spreading too much, which is why chilling the dough is a crucial step for cut-out and rolled cookies.

Pastry Flour: An unbleached flour made from soft wheat, with protein levels somewhere between cake flour and all-purpose flour (8 to 9 percent). Pastry flour strikes the ideal balance between flakiness and tenderness, making it perfect for pies, tarts and many cookies.

In general, bleached flour offers a more refined texture which can help make your cookies softer and more fluffy. Its flavor is also less invasive. On the other hand, unbleached flour is excellent for healthier cookie recipes, as it offers richer nutritional value.

If you have a cookie recipe that spreads a lot using all-purpose flour, then it's probably not the best idea to substitute self-rising flour. But any cookie with normal spread – one using at least 1/2 teaspoon baking powder per cup of flour – should be just fine.

According to Macrobiotic Nutritionist and Health Coach Shilpa Arora, "Amaranth, buckwheat and ragi are the best flours to use in case you are a diabetic.