Baking sugar cookies at Christmas is a longstanding tradition in my family and for as long as I can remember we’ve been using a recipe from one of my Grandma’s cookbooks-tattered and worn with pictures that have to be from the 1950’s.
family tradition
Every Christmas I pull out my copy of the recipe and get to work with the kids to create edible masterpieces. One of the changes I’ve made to the recipe recently is to sub in Greek yogurt for part of the butter and sour cream as well as reducing the original sugar amount by half a cup and there’s been no changes in taste or texture, and since I’ve always got greek yogurt in the fridge it is an easy swap.
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a new twist on an old favorite
This year thanks to a few farm animal cookie cutters, we created a whole barnyard of animals. We also put a little twist on the recipe to make multi-colored cookies. Before mixing the dry and wet ingredients, I set aside a cup of dry and a 1/3 cup of wet. To this I added two tablespoons of cocoa and another tablespoon of sugar to create a chocolate sugar cookie dough.
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I also separate a portion of the vanilla dough and added food coloring to color it pink. Initially, I used beet juice to try and get a nice pink color, but the beet juice affected the taste of the cookie so much that I opted to stick to traditional food coloring.
We used the vanilla and chocolate dough to create cute cows and horses and the pink and vanilla dough to create pigs and chickens. I thought they were too cute to put frosting on-although my kids didn’t share that sentiment.
What’s your favorite treat to bake during the holidays?
-Sarah
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| Prep Time | 20 minutes |
| Cook Time | 10-12 minutes |
| Passive Time | 20 minutes |
| Servings |
dozen
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- 4 cups flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 cup organic greek yogurt In place of a stick of butter. I use Stonyfield Yogurt.
- 1 stick butter
- 1 cups sugar reduced sugar by 1/2 cup
- 1 Nellie's Free Range Egg
- 1/2 cup organic greek yogurt In place of sour cream.
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Ingredients
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- Combine dry ingredients: flour, baking powder and soda, salt, and nutmeg. Set aside.
- Cream together butter, sugar and 1/2 cup organic Greek Yogurt and egg. Then add additional 1/2 cup of organic Greek Yogurt and vanilla extract. Gradually add dry mixture until stiff dough is formed.
- Form into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes.
- Roll out dough onto a floured surface to about 1/4 inch thick, cut with cookie cutters. (The thicker the dough, the fluffier the cookie).
- Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes. Cool and frost.
Your cookies are neat. I don’t think I would have thought to combine doughs like that. One of my kids is allergic to chocolate and dyes, so my cookies always look a bit plain, but they taste good!
i love making chocolate bark
I love to bake christmas cookies!
Oh those cookies look gorgeous! And I must say, the best recipes are the ones that come from tattered, flour-covered hand-me-down cookbooks! I have a few from my Granny and I swear the recipes taste so much better 😛
Those are the best recipes always!
we love making gingerbread cookies
i love baking peppermint brownies
I love to bake, so just about anything, but right now I’m making Christmas Crack! (Ritz cracker toffee)
Yum!
we love making gingerbread cookies
Mmmm yum!
I love baking pies! Apple is my favorite!