It’s almost Christmas time and if you haven’t done your Christmas baking yet, here’s a great butter cookies recipe. My friend originally found and shared this recipe with me and I have been using it since for my Christmas butter cookies. I love how easy it is to make and the results are always great!
I’ve been making this butter cookies recipe for years and everyone really enjoys them. Usually I roll the dough into a log, slice and bake them. I’ve also rolled them out and cut them into shapes and used icing to decorate them. Being not too keen on sweets, I use a half cup of sugar and use the whole egg instead of what the original recipe calls for. If you just use the egg yolk, the cookie turns out more shortbread-like, which is delicious too.
The kiddies always look forward to this Memorable Treat around Christmas time. I roll them out into a thinner roll and the cookies end up being smaller. The size is great for the kiddies’ hands. However, I end up eating more of them because they’re smaller 😉
Ingredients
- 8 ounces unsalted Butter
- 3/4 cup granulated Sugar
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 1 1/2 tsp pure Vanilla Extract
- 1 large Egg yolk
- 2 cups all-purpose Flour
Preparation
- Beat the butter, sugar, salt and vanilla together until smooth and creamy.
- Mix in the egg yolk until well incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl at least once.
- Add the flour and mix just until incorporated.
- Scrape onto a lightly floured board and knead a few times, just until the dough smooths out.
- Turn onto a sheet of plastic wrap and roll into a log, wrap up and refrigerate for several hours or freeze.
- Before baking, preheat the oven to 325°F.
- Line your baking sheets with parchment.
- Slice the dough into slices about 1/8" thick and place them on the sheets about an inch apart (they won't be spreading very much, but they need air room around each cookie).
- Bake until JUST beginning to turn golden around the edges, about 16-18 minutes.
- Note: you can do many things with these cookies.
- You could roll the dough out and cut shapes.
- You could slice them even thinner and sandwich them with chocolate or jam or lemon curd.
- You could make them and then dip them half into chocolate.
- You could just make them and eat them, which is my favorite.
- Whatever you do, they will be delicious.
Notes
For best results, make sure butter and egg should be at room temperature.
Original recipe from: Food.com
Hey I just tried this recipe..! Thank you!! But the cookies came out a bit hard. Why did I do wrong?
Oh no! Did you use the whole egg or egg yolk only? Using the whole egg will make it a little harder. Was your dough too thin? Did you overwork the dough? Every oven is different so you’ll need to adjust slightly for the baking temperature. Also, butter and egg should be at room temperature for best results. Let me know what you did and maybe I’ll help you figure it out 🙂
Sounds like I did everything wrong… I did use the whole egg… I don’t think the dough was too thin… But I did use a mixer to mix everything… I heated the butter up to melt it! Is that bad too?
The whole egg should be OK because you’ve had the cookies I made and I use the whole egg. I also use the mixer so that should be OK too. But no no on the melted butter. The butter should be at room temperature, not melted. What I do is, leave the butter you need at room temperature overnight and it should be good. 8 ounces = 1 cup of butter. Hope this helps 🙂
Ok I will try again this weekend!!
Great! Did it turn out OK? 🙂