Melly's Favorite Sugar Cookie Dough

Hi Everyone, I'm so sorry to have abandoned you.  I was on vacation and then came home and have been working on my latest baking project (see I told you I'd break the mixer out again soon.) It has been a doozy and taken me a lot longer than I initially planned.  So I have decided to break it into segments. 

Today we'll be covering my favorite basic sugar cookie dough.  I found this on iambaker and have loved it since the 1st time I made it.  It is super simple and can be tweaked to fit your personal flavor preferences. 

We start as all good recipes do by creaming the butter and the sugar in your mixer with the paddle attachment.

Once the butter and sugar are nice and fluffy, we'll add in our two egg yokes and mix until fully incorporated. 

Follow that with two whole eggs.  Once again, I cracked them into a bowl and added them one at a time.  I was running short on time and ingredients so I didn't want to risk a bad egg.

When the eggs are all mixed in, add the vanilla extract.

And the flavor extract.  Now. Amanda at iambaker uses 2 teaspoons of almond extract.  The first time I made these, I found that to be too much almond.  So I cranked it down to 1 teaspoon for the next batch.  I liked that a lot more.  For this batch I decided to go a completely different direction and used 2 teaspoons of lemon extract.  Let me tell you, it is divine.  Citrus-ey and light but still very sweet.  Any extract will do.  I think orange would be tremendous.  Try experimenting with your favorite flavor. 

Meanwhile, whisk together your flour, baking powder and salt.

Slowly add the dry ingredients to the mixer and mix until it it just barely incorporated.  You don't want to over mix.  There is nothing worse than a tough cookie (unless you are talking about a young girl with a lot of moxie.  Those tough cookies are awesome!)

Once the dry ingredients are all incorporated, scrape the dough onto some cling wrap. 

Using the ends of the wrap, work the dough into a log shape and wrap it up tightly.  I like the log because it is easier for me to break off pieces of it to work with when rolling and cutting my cookies.  You want to put this in the fridge for at least 1 hour but the longer the better. 

Next up! Rolling, cutting and baking the cookies.

Shopping List for iambaker's amazing sugar cookie recipe. (makes 36 - 40 large cookies)

1-½ cup Butter (Amanda calls for unsalted.  I of course use salted and I don't regret that decision)

2 cups Sugar

2 whole Eggs

2 whole Eggs Yolks

4 teaspoons Vanilla Extract

2 teaspoons Almond Extract

4 cups All-purpose Flour

1 teaspoon Salt

1 teaspoon Baking Powder