This is a family recipe I inherited from my grandma.
One story I always heard her tell was that her mom would never tell anyone her recipes. When her mom passed away, all those recipes were lost. So whenever I would ask grandma for a recipe, she would always give it to me. A few years before she died, I asked if she would make copies for me of all the Christmas cookies she used to make. She had rheumatoid arthritis which had tragically crippled and twisted her hands, and I was expecting her to send me scanned or photocopied recipes. Instead, one day there was an envelope from her in the mailbox containing 7 or 8 separate recipe cards, each written in her painfully shaky, labored handwriting. I knew what an effort that must have been for her and how much love she showed just by doing this simple thing. She has been gone since 2006, and those cards are now some of my most treasured recipes.
This one is labeled as “My main basic sugar cookie recipe”. This is a VERY soft sugar cookie that whips up and bakes like your standard drop cookie. This dough is very soft, and spreads and puffs enormously in the oven. This is definitely not a recipe for sugar cookie cutouts. As written, the directions call for the cookies to be pressed down with the bottom of a sugared glass. This is a quick way to get some nice décor and crunch on them.
If you’re just going to do the sugar, wet your finger with a drop of water, then rub your finger around the bottom of a glass. You don’t want your glass to be too wet, otherwise the sugar will clump and melt. Dip the wet glass into a small dish filled with sugar. Then press the glass gently onto your ball of dough.
But these cookies are so soft that they remind me a little bit of Lofthouse cookies, so I wondered what they would taste like with some soft vanilla buttercream on top. The answer was – awesome, as you would expect. I love the way the soft cookie melds with the sweet bite of crusting vanilla buttercream.
Grandma's Main Basic Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup salted butter, softened original recipe calls for margarine
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 cup granulated white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1 tsp cream of tartar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 4 ½ cups all-purpose flour
Instructions
- Cream butter and both sugars until light and fluffy.
- Add vanilla and eggs and mix until combined.
- Stir in vegetable oil and then dry ingredients. Make sure to combine dry ingredients thoroughly with the wet.
- Form dough into 1” balls.
- If you’re not going to frost them, roll them in granulated sugar.
- Then place on a lightly greased cookie sheet and slightly flatten into a disc shape with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar.
- A 1” cookie ball flattened spreads to about a 3” cookie so leave plenty of space between them.
- Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes until the bottoms are browning lightly.
- Frost if desired with soft buttercream frosting.
Cost
Using my CakeBoss Software, I calculated the ingredient cost of this recipe at $4.21. Since the recipe yields about 72 cookies, that means the cost of each cookie (not frosted) is right around $0.06!
