My dream has come true! I have successfully baked sugar cookies from scratch, made icing, and decorated them with Sam. They look and taste wonderful!
We've made sugar cookies and decorated them before (
here and
here), but they were not what I had in my mind. They were not pretty enough, too crunchy, and too much work and mess the first time I made them with Sam. The second time I didn't even let Sam help and I bought the cookies from the store.
The recipe made 30 cookies. I used a medium size cookie scoop to get a consistent size cookie and pressed the cookie dough into the pan. I cooked them for 15 minutes at 325 degrees. I used a lower temperature than the recipe suggested because the cookie pan is non-stick.
Why use White Lily flour?
Wheat flour contains two proteins, glutenin and gliadin. When you combine flour with water, the proteins create a strong and elastic sheet called gluten. Flours vary in their protein levels, which affects the texture of baked good. Gluten gives structure to yeast breads, but is not recommended for tender cakes, biscuits, and quick breads. Southern all-purpose flour is milled from soft red winter wheat that has less gluten-forming protein.
Most national brands of all-purpose flour are a combination of soft winter wheat and higher protein hard summer wheat. White Lily contains approximately 9 grams of protein per cup of flour, whereas national brands can contain eleven or twelve grams of protein per cup of flour. If you live outside the South, White Lily is available online or in specialty shops in other parts of the country (e.g. Central Market).
Pops keeps us supplied with White Lily flour and cornmeal, catfish, and other things that just aren't the same outside of the South. And, no, Texas is not "the South". Texas is Texas.
For results similar to those of Southern flour, substitute one part all-purpose flour and one part cake flour for the amount of Southern flour in a recipe. Finally, high protein flour absorbs more liquid than does low protein flour. If you attempt to make biscuits with a high protein flour, you will need to add more liquid.
Sam was not thrilled with the slow flow rate of the icing. He really just wanted to flood the cookies and sprinkle them with sugar. Next time I'll use the larger squeeze bottles for him. I like the smaller ones because you can get more detail and a thinner coat of icing. I personally just don't want that much icing on my cookies, and the added bonus is that thinner icing means less drying/hardening time.
Only 24 of the cookies got iced because the other 6 got eaten while we were waiting for them to cool. I couldn't keep 3 hungry boys out of the kitchen with the smell of fresh baked cookies after being snowed in all day. That would just be cruel!
Mmmm ... Sammy couldn't wait to eat the teddy bear.
