#baking tutorial

Here we go, making cookies!!

Got all of my ingredients together! Recipe calls for 24 tbsp of butter for some reason, that’s just 3 sticks (Each stick is 8 tbsp). I usually buy butter specifically sold as butter sticks to make it easier to measure, but they are typically a little bit more expensive. If you get one of those big blocks of butter, just remember that each block is 4 sticks (Cut in quarters down the length of it) and then each stick is 8 tbsp.

Tip for separating out egg yolks - literally just scoop it up with your hands. Yes it’s messy, but it’s also hella easy, and that way you don’t break the yolk (I may have even gotten that tip from the recipe video itself, I don’t remember, but I definitely didn’t figure that one out myself lol)

To measure the cream cheese, I just used a spare stick of butter. They’re about the same height, so I cut a groove the same width as the stick, and then used the handy-dandy tbsp markings on the butter stick to figure out how wide to cut to get 3 tbsp

Very important step, make sure your mixer is actually plugged in

The Tasty recipe uses a hand mixer, but I’m a lucky bitch who got a stand mixer as a wedding present so I’m using that instead. You could theoretically do this all by hand, but, like, your arm would probably fall off before you could cream the butter and sugar together, and there’s so much more mixing coming up. Why would you do that to yourself? I definitely wouldn’t recommend trying to do this recipe by hand, make sure you have some sort of electric mixer, or make someone else do the mixing for you :P

Time to throw a bunch of stuff in there and start mixing! In goes the butter, cream cheese, and sugar! I set the mixer to med speed and mixed for 3 min, then scraped down the sides, then did 2 more, 1 more scrape, and 1 more min to make sure the sugar’s all dissolved in the butter and cream cheese. That's technically a little bit longer than what the Tasty recipe calls for, but this is one of those "your timing might vary moments", based on your mixing technique and equipment

Scrape!

I think it mentions it in the recipe video, but the way you can tell if the sugar is mixed in well is if you pick up a bit of the butter and rub it between your fingers and it doesn’t feel as gritty. If you can feel a lot of grit, it’s not mixed in enough. Like, I can still feel something at this point, but it’s definitely not pure sugar crystals left.

She lookin FLUFF

Next we're adding the egg, egg yolks, vanilla, and almond extract. I highly recommend cracking your egg into a separate dish before adding it to the mix, just to avoid having to pick out egg shells if you’re bad at cracking them like I am. You can even use the same dish you were holding your egg yolks in if you want to make less dishes.

Add the eggos and extracts in! They’re going to be friends!

SPIN CYCLE. Basically mix until everything looks combined and you can't see the individual ingredients anymore. When you're done, scrape it down!

Time for the dry stuff! The recipe recommends sifting the flour, salt, baking powder, and cream of tartar directly into your mixing bowl. I forgot to take a picture of when I actually had the ingredients in the sifter, but here’s the set up, and the after. Basically you put your sifter over your mixing bowl, dump the dry stuff into the sifter, and then lightly tap the sides to knock the dry stuff down into the mixing bowl. Watch out, as you tap, the powders will actually start to travel UP the sides of the sifter, so you'll have to make sure to settle them back down towards the middle occasionally.

Side note: I don’t know if it’s 100% necessary to sift the dry ingredients, so like, don’t stress out too much if you don’t have a sifter, I think it just ensures that there’s no flour lumps in your dough and makes mixing easier/ your cookies look nicer at the end. They should still taste the same, regardless lol

Folding time! For anyone who’s new to baking, folding in your dry stuff just means mix it gently with a spoon or spatula first. Because if you try to take a mixer to this right away, all you’re going to get is a cloud of flour in your face. Even when I started mixing by hand, I still sent up a big puff of it everywhere.

Back to mixing with the mixer! You want to mix the dough just until it starts taking on the consistency of play-doh. You'll kind of know it's ready because suddenly it'll feel like the whole thing is clinging to your mixing paddle/mixing beaters at once.

Kronk Voice: Oh yeah, it’s all coming together

Take the dough out of the bowl and throw it onto A Surface. I happen to have a pastry mat because my mom got one once and loved it so much she bought one for everyone she knows, but a clean counter or really big cutting board works just as well. The dough is gonna be pretty sticky, so I’d recommend coating your hands and your Surface in flour to help prevent it sticking to everything. Just sprinkle a handful of flour onto your Surface and spread it around with your palm and you should be good.

Mush your dough together like it’s play-doh, and then wrap it up in plastic wrap. Try to make the disk as flat as you can without it spilling out of the plastic wrap because that’ll make it easier to roll out later. Then throw that bad boy in the fridge, and take advantage of your waiting time to wash some dishes. Future you will thank you for getting ahead of the dish pile-up

So! 2 hours later it’s time to transform and roll out! (the dough, that is). Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and let's get to the fun part!

Unwrap your dough, put it down on your Surface, and start to squish it down to about a half cm thick (1/4inch) or so. If you have a rolling pin, great, but any hard cylinder will do (yes I know how that sounds). You could even squish it by hand, but it might be a bit tricky to get it flat enough to bake evenly. I also broke the dough into chunks and worked with small pieces one by one so that it was easier to work with and didn’t take up too much space

Time to break out the cookie cutters! Yes I know some of mine look kinda stained, but those are my grandmother’s cookie cutters (maybe my great grandma? IDEK) so you KNOW they’re the good ones

Dough is still sticky, use a spatula as needed to free cookies from your Surface. I’d also recommend using flour again to keep the dough from sticking. I definitely forgot lol

Start putting those cookies on your cookie sheet! The cookies do spread a little, so don’t let the cookies touch each other, but like, a cm of space is MORE than enough between the cookies. And trust me, you will need the space.

COOKIES

The tasty recipe says it’s supposed to make 12 cookies. Like, maybe if it’s Godzilla baking them? Or if you intend the cookies to be the size of a dinner plate? This isn’t even all of the cookies, this was just all I could fit on two cookie sheets

Into the oven they go!

While the first batch is baking, I remembered I DID have a christmas tree shaped cutter, and these WERE supposed to be christmas cookies. I dug it out, and used it for the rest of the dough. I was getting a bit tired at this point, so these ones are a bit more lumpy and rushed. Oh well, I’m sure they’ll still be delicious

Batch 1 baked! I put them in for 11 min (recipe calls for 10-12) but I didn’t think they looked done at that point. Put them in for another 2, and that seems to have been perfect. Again, this is another one of those "your timings may vary" moments. What you're looking for is the very bottom edges of the cookies to have just a hint of brown on them. The tops should still be pretty pale. A couple of the ones on the edges here are a little bit extra brown (hard to tell in the photos), but overall these guys are looking good!

Quality assurance check!

So gooood

And batch 2! Did 12 min for these ones, because they were smaller and on a different kind of baking sheet, and they turned out perfect.

I ended up icing my cookies, but honestly you could genuinely leave them as-is, and they’re still a damn good cookie. 

And there you have it! A step-by-step cookie tutorial/rant on how to make super tasty sugar cookies! Great for christmas, or any occasion, really!

I do a lot of baking and cooking, so I do have some baking equipment that not everyone may own, but hopefully I've offered suggestions for alternatives that folks can use for each step. I'm also no expert or professional, I do this for fun, but if anyone has any questions or needs clarification on any of the steps, I'm always happy to try to explain things in more detail! And if people like this, I might try to make another tutorial rant someday!