Gotta bump this thread for now and finally add a recipe of my own. Not exactly a meal, but rather a snack.. because everyone loves cookies, right? These sugar cookies are sweet, soft, and flavorful. I like to either frost them with royal icing and decorate them, or just top with decorative sugar / sprinkles etc and bake. I drop these cookies by eye so I don't have a set time yet, although I can come up with one for tablespoon measurements if anyone thinks it's truly necessary. I usually just check after 8-10 minutes in the oven and if they're done I can easily tell if the dough has cooked, and I don't let them brown around the edges anymore than a slight gold tint. Yasupon's Drop Sugar Cookies Might snap a picture of them later, right now there is none... Ingredients: 2 1/4 Cups All Purpose Flour 1 tsp Baking Powder 1/4 tsp Baking Soda 1/4 tsp Salt 1/2 Cup Soft Butter (One U.S Stick) 1/2 Cup Shortening (I use Butter Flavored Crisco) 1 Egg 2 tsp Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Extract 1 3/4 Cups Domino's Sugar (Or Ordinary Cane Sugar) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the Flour, Baking Powder, Baking Soda, and Salt in a large bowl and set aside. In a large bowl, combine the Butter, Shortening, and Sugar: cream until well combined (about a minute should be sufficient). Beat in the egg and cream on medium or medium-high speed until the mixture starts to turn a light yellow. Beat in the Vanilla, and then add in the flour mixture, little by little, and beat in until well combined. Drop cookies to the size of your liking onto ungreased cookie / baking sheets. Make sure to spread them apart at least an inch and a half away from each other. Typical time will take around 8-10 minutes on a well heated oven, but varies depending on the size of your cookies and how long the oven has been preheating. I like to make these dropping large pinchfuls of dough that I flatten in the pan, (about the size of the circle if you make your middle finger and thumb touch nails) in which it takes about 10 or so minutes to finish. Before baking you can add in toppings, such as sugar, or decorative sugar (the decorative sugar will not burn), or you can create a royal icing for these cookies, which is more fun, but more work.. Royal Icing uses pasteurized egg whites, or you can use spray dried egg whites instead. If you're worried about salmonella even using pasteurized eggs, egg white powder is already cooked, and does the job just as well. Here's a basic recipe for royal icing: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/royal-icing-iii/ If you're worried about the raw egg, you can replace the pasteurized egg whites with 1 tablespoon and one teaspoon of dried egg whites, and some water until frosting is pipable, which means not too thick but not too thin. You can skip the cream of tartar.
