Mom's Sugar Cookies (Holiday Favorite)

I'm excited to share this sugar cookie recipe with everyone. It's easily one of my favorite cookies and it has a boat load of memories connected to it. My mom makes these cookies every Thanksgiving and Christmas and she always has since I can remember. These ARE, in fact, the cookies we left for Santa when I was a kid and now my kiddos leave them out for Santa as well (lucky guy). Anyway, in our house there are 2 types of sugar cookies: the crumbly ones, and the solid ones with icing. This recipe is for the crumbly ones. They are thin, sweet, fall apart, and melt in your mouth delicious. I would not recommend putting icing on these, it would be a sugar overload and they would crumble apart.

My mom found this recipe in an old cookbook and as much as I would love to cite it, I haven't a clue what the book is called. This recipe is written on a tiny, torn, food stained sticky note and is currently on my fridge door. That's all I know about it.

Oh yes, and can you tell I love to photograph food? I even loved taking food pics before I started blogging. I wish I could say I have a fancy-schmancy camera, but I don't. It still gets the job done though. :) Now prepare for 30,000 pics. What can I say..... all of the kiddos were napping.

Combine the dry ingredients and set aside 

Mix the sugars and wet ingredients,
slowly add flour mixture 

Once the dough comes together, stop mixing

Make 1-inch balls 

Dip the bottom of the glass in the dough to moisten it

Now dip the glass in the sugar 

Smash one cookie, dip the glass in sugar,
smash another cookie, and so on

Smashed cookies 

Baked cookies with extra sugar sprinkled on

Remove from baking sheet right away and cool 

Thin, sweet, yummy, holiday cookies! Childhood favorite!

Mom's Sugar Cookies
Serving Size = About 30 cookies

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup), softened
• 1/2 cup of oil (canola, or vegetable, or grapeseed)
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Extra sugar for smashing and decorating

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease baking sheet.
2. In a bowl mix together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
3. In a mixer, mix together the butter and sugar until creamed together then add the egg. Add the powdered sugar, oil and vanilla, mix.
4. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until just combined.
5. Pour some sugar onto a small plate and then take a large drinking glass (about a 3-inch wide bottom) and dip the bottom of the glass into the cookie dough just to moisten it. Place the glass, bottom side down, onto the sugar covered plate.
6. With the dough, form 1-inch balls and place a few inches apart on the baking sheet. Take the sugar covered glass and smash each cookie until it spreads out to the size of the glass. Dip the glass in sugar again and repeat with each cookie, remembering to dip the glass into the sugar after smashing each cookie.
7. Bake for 12 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies just start to get a touch of light brown color on them. Remove from oven and sprinkle lightly with sugar, just for decoration. Remove immediately to a cooling rack.

Note: These freeze well.


Another note! :) My friend over at Needlefinger's made these cookies and replaced the all-purpose flour with Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All-Purpose Flour and she said it worked perfectly. Check out her blog for pics! 

Linking to: Sweets for a Saturday, Hearth and Soul