Categories: Living

Cooking: Butter Cookies

Michael Pollan, author of the Food Rules, once stated that you should eat anything you cannot be bothered with cooking from scratch. ; His point is that most bad for you foods have quite a bit of hassle in cooking them, so most people will not want to go through the hassle. ; Store bought cookies, for example, are easy. ; Making them from scratch is not easy so therefore cookies become a special treat.

Makes sense to me. The other night we really wanted cookies. ; I decided to try my hand at butter cookies. ; I mean, if you are going to cheat, then cheat.

Ingredients: ; Stick unsalted butter softened, ¾ cup sugar, 1 teaspoon Mexican Vanilla, 1 egg, 2 cups all purpose flour, ½ baking powder, pinch of salt, ¼ cup of milk (more if needed.)

Process: ; I creamed the sugar and the butter slowly and then added the egg and the vanilla. ; In a separate bowl, I mixed dry ingredients, then added half to the dough, and then beat it for a couple of seconds. ; Then the same procedure is done with the other half. ; I baked them at 375 for about 13 minutes. ; This recipe is from How to Cook Everything.

Results: ; The recipe said it makes about 2-3 dozen. ; Unless the recipe meant teaspoon instead of tablespoon when doling out to the cookie sheet, I could only produce about a dozen and half. ; The flavor was nice and buttery but a little dry. ; ;It reminded me of the tea cookies. ; ; ; In addition, the recipe allows for extra spices, and I think I should have added a little cinnamon and sugar especially at the top.

Butter Cookies

Verdict: ; ; This recipe is decent starter cookie recipe that begs for experimentatio

Kurt Hargis

I'm a husband to a woman who is nerdier than I am, and a father to a near perfect child. I am one of the main authors for this website, plus I handle most of the technical aspects (web design, editing podcasts, and videos, etc.) During the day, I'm a Computer Science and African American Studies Teacher. Most of my free time I'm listening to music or podcasts and watching soccer. I love Star Wars and Star Trek equally. I'm a horrible gamer yet I game. You can reach me at nolanerdcouple@gmail.com

View Comments

  • Hello Kurt,
    Looks like a great easy butter cookie recipe. You make me want to get Mark Bittman\'s books now!

    BTW, you have a typo in the recipe-it is FLOUR not FLOWER. :-)

    I do editing for a living as well as write web content, SEO etc.

    Great job though!

    Polly Motzko

    • Thanks for the catch...I\'ve always struggled with writing homophones (as well as mixing up d and p and all those types of letters) so anytime someone catches a mistake I\'m more than grateful.

      • Yep, I know what you mean. :-) I usually catch most everything, but it is nice if someone tells me if there is a glitch with a link or something. :-)

        I love your blog and your recipes and would love you to join both my cooking sites. :-)

        Also, after looking around on \"Cooking Up a Storm All Over The World!\", if you are interested in being a weekly writer on it, I would welcome it with open arms. ;-)

        Also, this year I am also doing Travel Correspondents who talk about what is new, hot and interesting in the city, state, and country they live in.

        CookingUpaStorminCa.ning.com

        CookingUpaStorminCA@gmail.com

        Keep up the great work!

        Polly Motzko

  • The simpler the recipe, the stronger the need for quality ingredients. If your butter was old, or supermarket brand....or if your vanilla extract was, God Forbid, the cheap, double-strength Watkins kind made of half real vanilla and half fake vanilla, or if your eggs are the flavorless industrial kind, a recipe like this will seem blah. Try it again some time with a yard egg, some Smith\'s Creamery butter, and use a quality vanilla extract (like Neilsen-Massey), plus scrape the innards of a vanilla bean into the batter. Voila--an entirely different result.

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