Tuesdays with Dorie: Grandma's All-Occasion Sugar Cookies

      This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, from the cookbook Baking:  From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, is Grandma's All-Occasion Sugar Cookies, can be found on page 146-147, and was chosen by Ulrike of Küchenlatein.  If you would like to try the recipe before buying the book, click on Ulrike's site above and she will have it posted today.  Ulrike lives in Northern Germany and publishes her blog in German, but there is a translating connect that you can click on to see it in English.  Her English is so wonderful that she may just have published it in English this week.    

      Hands down, this is now the best sugar cookie recipe I have in my possession...thank you, Dorie.  I have several from growing up years as my mother and my Aunt Minnie both made excellent sugar cookies.  That said, I follow their recipes, but I can never get them to turn out as good as they make them...something is missing in the technique or ingredient list, I'm not sure which, but mine taste nothing like my mother's.   

      Dorie's however, taste just like my mother's and the recipe is very easy, fast, and extremely tasty.  The only thing I changed was that I added another half teaspoon of vanilla to the recipe as we really like our sugar cookies to taste of vanilla. 

      The dough went together great, the chilling time in the frig was just right, the rolling of the dough was easy and fast, and the baking time was right on the money.   Absolutely a keeper of a recipe all the way around. 

      I decorated ours like my mother used to do when we were growing up.  She made all sorts of shapes and sizes of cookies, but the wreath cookies were always my favorite, and still are, because they have cinnamon red hot candies on them and cinnamon red hot candies are my most favorite candy in the entire world.  They go perfectly with the cookies, the vanilla buttercream icing, and a glass of milk.  Come on over, I'll prove it to you!   

      As you can tell from Matt's photo, it was all "finger-licking good!"  Alex, while still liking to eat the cookies, no longer finds decorating them enjoyable, so it was just Matt and I in the kitchen decorating the cookies last evening.   

      All the guys here agree that this recipe produces very fine sugar cookies and declared them "most excellent" all the way around.  High praise from guys who have tasted many sugar cookies and would know the value of an excellent one!   

      And, just for fun, here's a photo from days gone by...the boys were two at the time, Matt on the left in red and Alex on the right in green...decorating Christmas cookies and having a blast.  Matt has obviously gotten a bit neater over the years!  Bake with your kids...the time passes quickly! 

       Next week's recipe was chosen by Heather and is Buttery Jam Cookies, which can be found on page 80. 

      Click here and then click on individual bakers' blogs at the site if you would like to see more of this week's recipe and the various ways people interpreted their quest.  It is too late to join the online TWD baking blog, but you can always join us in spirit as the recipes for upcoming weeks are posted on the site and you can bake along in your own kitchen.  See you there!