Christmas Cookies - Sour Cream Cutouts
Other than listening to some Christmas music, this is the first thing “Christmas-y” thing I’ve done this year… Christmas cookies. (Decorating my house will hopefully happen this week yet.) These were for a cookie exchange, so I *ahem* didn’t let my eager little helpers in on the fun because I have to say “No licking!” about 273 times in the course of the project and that just sorta wrecks the Christmas spirit. So, I got up early and made & frosted them myself.
I’m not a fan of sugar cookies, butter cookies, or any frosted cookies like that because I think they’re rather dry and messy and not very tasty. Having said that, these would be about at the top of the list of good frosted cookies that I’ve had. The only better ones I can think of were some that my friend Kim made one time. They had cream cheese in them.
Sour Cream Cutouts … recipe taken from the Christmas Cookies & Candies cookbook
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
6 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup sour cream
FROSTING:
1/2 cup butter, softened
4 cups powdered sugar
3 Tbsp. milk (I added more so it would be faster/easier spreading)
Food coloring, optional
In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine dry ingredients; add to the creamed mixture alternately with sour cream (dough will be sticky). Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours or until easy to handle. (It’s not kidding about this… impatient me tried it without chilling. Bad idea. So, I chilled it for about an hour and the process went MUCH better!) On a floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4″ thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters dipped in flour. Place 1″ apart on greased baking sheets. Bake at 375 for 8-12 minutes or until lightly browned. (I set the timer for 10 min and they were perfect.) For frosting, beat the butter, powdered sugar, and milk until smooth. Add food coloring if desired. Frost cookies. Yield: about 9 dozen.
Up next: Lexi’s 7th birthday cake. Her birthday was actually today, the party is tomorrow… 7 of her friends are coming after school.
Cake Mix Cookies
V-A-R-I-E-T-Y!!!! That’s what’s so fun about these cookies! You know in the grocery store, in the baking aisle, how there are several shelves full of cake mixes? Red ones, yellow ones, white ones, brown ones, confetti ones, pink ones, orange ones, blue ones… are there blue ones? Not sure about that now that I think of it.
And you can make even more variety! You can mix the colors too… make brown and pink (chocolate and strawberry) for your daughter’s slumber party… when you’re rolling the dough into balls, make them half the size they should be, then smash a brown and pink one together and put it on the cookie sheet.
I should’ve made a bunch of different kinds and then featured them all. But, I guess I’ll just feature them using one kind. The best flavor ever in the world of food.
Chocolate.
This recipe is adapted from the Tasteful Delights cookbook.
Cake Mix Cookies
1 cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 Tbsp. flour
Don’t you just wonder what magic that little tablespoon of flour does? Seems like it wouldn’t make enough difference for the bother. Next time, I should be really daring and omit it, and see what happens. 
Beat all the ingredients together. Roll into balls and put on cookie sheets.
Bake at 350 for 11 minutes.
Yum. They have cracks in them. I like when cookies have cracks like that. Makes them look soft and chewy.
Sprinkle with sugar. I used powdered sugar. I just sprinkled some of them because I think I like the looks of them better without.
Actually, I think I like them best some with and some without. You know, variety.
What do you get when you mix snickerdoodles with sour cream cookies, but don’t have eggs?
You get these cookies. Not bad, huh?
Ok, time to dust off this site again. For those of you who have come back over the last 2 weeks to check if there’s anything new, do you sorta feel like you’re getting to know Trevor? And don’t you want one of his cookies?
We got a serious cookie craving awhile ago… Lexi said, “Mom, can we make cookies?” and I said “Sure!” and without another word, we both stopped what we were doing, headed for the kitchen and I went for the cookbooks and she pulled the flour out of the cupboard. That’s when you know it’s a serious cookie craving. If it wouldn’t have been, we would’ve just acted like that would be a good idea and say how we’d “sure like some cookies” and “maybe this evening we could make some” and then just went on with what we were doing.
The first problem was that we had no chocolate chips. The second problem was more serious… no eggs. There are LOTS of cookie recipes with no choc chips, but very few with no eggs. I thought of making Mary’s Cream Cheese Cookies. (The reason I thought of making those is because this exact thing had happened and after searching cookbook after cookbook, I had fiiiiiiiiiiiiinally found one without eggs.) I’ll bet you anything when Shannon reads this, he’ll wonder why I didn’t Google ‘cookie recipe no eggs’ or something like that. His brother Wendell will probably wonder that too. Now that I think of it, I kinda wonder too.
Anyway.
What ended up happening is that we have a brand new made-up recipe. Not usually what I have in mind when I say I’m gonna try a new recipe. I looked at the cream cheese cookie recipe this time and noticed there were no secret ingredients taking place of the eggs and I had sour cream in the fridge, so I combined and deleted some ingredients and changed a few amounts on a snickerdoodle and sour cream cookie recipe and here it is:
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup shortening
1 1/4 cups sour cream
4 cups flour
2 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
Cream sugar and shortening. Add dry ingredients alternately with sour cream. Add vanilla. Roll into balls. Flatten a bit. Sprinkle generously with cinnamon sugar. Lexi was in charge of putting on the cinnamon sugar and when she started loading it on, I almost said “Not so much!”, but just in time, I thought, ‘You know, that looks kinda good!’ And it was!
Bake for 12 minutes at 375.
Well, they look pretty normal, don’t they?
And they tasted great! Seriously! Sometime, I want to try them with chocolate chips and omit the cinnamon sugar. Or would cinnamon be good with chocolate chips?
Look how soft they are. They’re nice and chewy, not crunchy.
Now I hope that I’m not out of eggs AND sour cream AND cream cheese when the next cookie craving hits. If so, we’ll have to settle for No Bake Cookies, which isn’t a bad choice. At all.
Ok, I’m off to Google ‘Why do cookie recipes have eggs in them?’ Or maybe I’ll Bing it. Just this week, I learned there’s such a thing as Bing.
Jam Bars
Usually when I’m flipping thro’ a cookbook and a recipe JUMPS out and grabs me, it’s a recipe with chocolate chunks or melted milk chocolate in it. This time, it wasn’t though. I think what grabbed me about these bars was the cream cheese. And the fact that when there’s a brown sugar/oatmeal/butter mixture, it’s always good… like these Peanut Butter Dream Bars, for example.
This recipe comes from the Tasteful Delights cookbook. The committee behind this cookbook includes a couple of my friends, Michelle and Monica. Good recipes in there! Sometime, I want to try the stuffed mushrooms, bacon cheese chicken, frozen mocha dessert, and a bunch of others. But for now, we’ve got some scrumptious jam bars…
Jam Bars
2 cups rolled oats (I used quick oats)
1 3/4 cup flour
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
Desired amount of cream cheese filling
Any flavor jam
Combine all ingredients in a bowl.
Reserve 2 cups crumbs and press the rest in a 9×13 pan and bake for 10 minutes.
Spread cream cheese evenly over crust, then jam over cream cheese.
I used about 1 cup of cream cheese filling.
I used about 1/2 cup of jam. Next time, I’d use more like 1/4 cup of jam. It was a little too sweet and the strawberry flavor over-powered the cream cheese flavor, I thought. And that’s not good when fruit over-powers cream cheese! 
Sprinkle crumbs over jam.
Bake until crumbs are golden. After 17 minutes, it looked like this, so I got it out of the oven… looks great to me!
These didn’t last long around here! They’re pretty easy too. They oughta cool before cutting and eating though. They didn’t hold their shape very well while still warm. They are THE best out of the fridge. I don’t think they’d need to be stored in the fridge, but they were extra good when they were chilled. By the way, I made only a half batch (and used an 8×8 pan) because I didn’t have enough of one of the ingredients and I wanted to make them NOW.
About the cream cheese filling, I buy it in tubes at a local bulk foods store, but if you don’t have access to it or would rather make your own, here’s a wonderful cream cheese filling recipe:
8 oz softened cream cheese, 1 egg, 1/4 cup sugar, and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Beat till smooth.
Chocolate Chip Cookies - Cooks in Training #7
Yeah, I know… as you scroll down this page, the posts look a little heavy to kid stuff. It wasn’t planned, it kinda just happened, but how fitting… because that’s pretty much my life. And I say that in a good way, I love my 2 little girls and I know they’ll grow up way too fast. But until then, they’ll be a part of my cooking blog.
Lexi is 6. She already loves doing stuff in the kitchen, especially if it involves using her mini cooking stuff. She has declared it her job to make the iced tea around here, if I just do the part of dumping the hot tea into the pitcher. And, on non-school days, she often makes lunch around here (nothing on the stove). I’d have her pack her own school lunch, except that it makes more sense for me to do it while she’s eating breakfast or getting ready. She does have opinions though… the other day, she said, “Mom, next time you pack my lunch, do you think you could think of something healthy to put in it like an apple or something? I don’t wanna get all weak and stuff.” Thing is, it wasn’t exactly unhealthy, it was a sandwich, chips, and grapes.
Tiffany is 3. She loves doing stuff in the kitchen too. But WHY can’t she dump a 2 1/2″ in diameter measuring cup full of flour into an 8″ in diameter mixing bowl without spilling it out over the side?!!!!!
We’ve got a chocolate chip cookie recipe to feature today, from the Kid’s Cook cookbook. Cute little chocolate chip cookies. I told them to make the dough into balls and (because of their little hands?) the balls ranged from the size of a marble to the size of a super ball. Instead of the usual 12 cookies that I bake on one sheet, we got almost twice that many on, no problem. I realized I kinda like little cookies… they’re bite-sized and easy to pop in your mouth. This is not my usual chocolate chip cookie recipe, but it’s actually pretty close. This recipe is a small recipe, which is nice because there’s less chance of the mom having to finish the cookies when they get tired of making them and run off to play. I usually copy the directions word for word, but I’m just gonna paraphrase these because it’s written kinda kid-like and detailed.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup chocolate chips
Heat oven to 375. Stir egg, sugars, and butter with wooden spoon until mixed.
Add flour, soda, salt and stir with wooden spoon till mixed.
Stir in chocolate chips. Form into balls and put on cookie sheets.
Could I please have the cookie in the front on the left up there?
Bake for 10-12 minutes.
About Me
Hi! Welcome to my kitchen! My name is Kay. I'm from central Ohio. I love cooking and baking. Especially baking. It's thereapeudic for me. I'm not a professional or gourmet cook by any means. I'm a Christian homemaker who happens to take pictures of some of the food I make. I have 2 little 'helpers'... Lexi (7) and Tiffany (3), who are young cooks in training. I don't do anything on the grill... that's where my husband Shannon comes in! He grills quite a bit, especially in the summer. So, sit back and enjoy browsing thro' the recipes. If you try some of them, I'd love to hear feedback on how you liked them! If you want to contact me, my email address is kaylouann@gmail.com
Blogroll
- Cookie Madness - Great recipes and pictures of cookies that leave you with a helpless craving.
- Mama’s Southern Cooking - Comfy site with good cookin’ and lots of tips.
- The Pioneer Woman Cooks! - Home-cooking, lots of pictures and fun reading
Her Blog Directory