Soft Vanilla Sugar Cookies

One of my favorite YouTube food bloggers is Laura Vitale.  I just love the way she says, "This is Laura Vitale, Guys!"  Because I was invited to make some sugar cookies for an upcoming  Relief Society meeting, I thought I would check for soft sugar cookies (Dear One likes SOFT cookies) online.  There were several recipes I noticed that seemed good but I chose to make Laura's recipe.

Laura Vitale's Soft Vanilla Sugar Cookies

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder (Yes! 1/4 teaspoon)

3/4 cup butter at room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Put parchment paper on two half-sheet pans.

In a large bowl or in your stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until they are light.  Add the eggs and vanilla and continue whisking/beating.   This will take about one to two minutes

In a separate bowl combine the flour, salt, and baking powder and mix well, then add in to the sugar/butter/egg mixture until well-combined but be gentle and quick...don't stir very long or you can toughen the cookies.  Not so much fun to eat tough cookies...

Using a 2-Tablespoon portion scoop or a heaping tablespoon, scoop out the dough and put no more than twelve cookie dough globs on each cookie sheet.  I bake them one at a time but if you want to cook two at once you MUST rotate the cookie sheets around half way through to cook them evenly.  

Bake 10-12 minutes.  My cookies, one sheet at a time needed 12 minutes to be baked.  They should be pale on top and lightly browned around the edges.  They are nice and soft with a tiny crisp circumference.

Because I tend to gild the lily, I decided to put some Wilton Candy Melts on top as an icing of sorts.  Also because I did not want a lot of dishes to wash (since I had already put the dishwasher running and I DEPLORE opening the dishwasher door after deciding it was full enough to set going, unlike SOME people in our home...) I put two different colors of candy melts in a cereal bowl and microwaved them for 30 seconds, stirred,  then for another 15 seconds.

 

At first I just drizzled some of the melted candy over the tops of some cookies but that was not appealing so I just spooned it on.  Well, I was getting ready to be done because I was afraid I would start eating them if I did not hurry.

This is what they looked like finished:

Not so hot to look at but since the kids that eat them receive them at 6 AM, they may possibly not be quite awake and are less likely to notice imperfections.  At least, that is what I tell myself...

Dear One came home and went right to the unfrosted cookies.  In moments they were gone.  I broke down and ate two of them myself.  R-r-r-r!  They did taste pretty good and the soft, yet crisp, is really a winning combination to my way of thinking, but I did NOT want to eat any.  Companionable eating/social eating is a very bad thing for some bodies...