Easy No Spread Sugar Cookies

Hey bakers, John Kanell here, and today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making the perfect sugar cookie. These are so easy, and with the addition of one ingredient, they become a magical treat. Do you see this edge? It is just vertical. It didn't become a glob. It wasn't frustrating to work with. It only needed like a few minutes in the fridge to chill, and that was just so I wouldn't get my fingerprints on it, to be honest. All right, let's get started. First off, I'm adding four cups, or 480 grams of all-purpose flour into my bowl, and there's a sifter here too, so it makes everything really easy. Half a teaspoon of salt, one third of a cup of cornstarch. This is the stuff that's gonna make it not spread. It also makes your cookie kind of like tender and crisp at the same time, not chewy though. So if you like a chewy sugar cookie, this is not for you, but if you want your cookie to not spread out and become a glob, this is for you. So sift this all out. Okay, whisk it all up, set it aside, and now it's time for the butter and sugar. Into the bowl of my stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, I'm adding 226 grams, or one cup of unsalted, room temperature butter. Let's give it a quick cream, and then add in one cup, or 200 grams, of granulated sugar. Mix it up until it's nice and light and fluffy and just right. You can give the bowl a quick scrape down, not necessary, but it helps. All right, let me show you what light and fluffy means, because you always read that in recipes, but some people are like, what does that even mean? This, now the butter has become a lighter color, so much closer to white, and it's really fluffed up a lot. It's got air pumped into there, and the sugar is totally mixed in. It's not dissolved, but it's mixed in. Now we're gonna add in two room temperature eggs, one at a time. Room temperature eggs incorporate way more easily, and they're always what you want in baking, except for certain pastry things, but that's a whole other story. Let that first egg incorporate, and then add the second one in. All right, definitely scrape that bowl down one more time, and mix it up. Now I'm gonna add a couple teaspoons of vanilla in, just eyeball that out, and mix it up. You could have also used almond extract, lemon zest, the world is your oyster here, so many different flavorings to use. Add the flour in in one big batch, making sure not to spill too much. I call that a success. Mostly a success, still. Now let's mix that up. On low to start off with. Okay, now I think it's ready. Yeah. But, take a moment, move all that flour into there, and scrape the bowl down one more time. Yes, you could use a scraping paddle attachment. I actually have one. I got so many recommendations to buy one. But, I will tell you, they really make everything fly up into the air, while also mostly scraping the bottom. You can tell me in the comments if you've had a similar experience, or there's some magical thing I'm missing, but the tea towel works great. All right, almost done. There we go. So here, I want you to see, this cornstarch works a magic. This dough is like Play-Doh, almost. It's not sticking to my fingers, even though it's room temperature. And really, if you wanted to, you could just toss it into the oven right now, and it would be fine. However, this no-chill dough will get chilled just so I can have nice, clean shapes cut out. You know, like right now. Yes, that cuts out nicely, but it'll cut out nicely and handle nicely so you can transfer them around once it's chilled. Okay, thank you, magical cornstarch. Right now, we're gonna roll this out and then chill it. Dump that dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap. I don't know if you can see it, but it's here. Let's push it together. Now, I'm just gonna roll it out between two layers of plastic. This only needs like 20 minutes in the fridge. The only thing is that you don't want any of this dough to dry out in the fridge, so it needs to be all covered by plastic. Into the fridge, just lay it flat, and we'll be right back with a swap-out. My swap-out was on the counter for like five minutes so it could warm up just a bit. I actually made it last night, so that's why it had to be there for a bit longer. Dust that surface really well. I'm using a pastry mat, by the way, so it doesn't have to be direct work on the counter. Now, let's place this out. You can see it cracked a lot because I placed it on some bottles. There was no room in the fridge, so it was all wavy when it came out, and then it cracked flat. Let's flour the rolling pin and get to work. Can you hear that they're trimming trees next door? And by trimming trees, I mean completely cutting down a 50-year-old pine tree. And on a similar note, George doesn't feel like taking a nap. On my last Q&A, which you can click up here for, I learned that some people didn't know that this is my house. They thought it was a set, but it's actually where I live and the babies are, and the tree trimmers work around, so. Errant noises here and there. So I'll be cutting out a few different shapes. Circles, my favorite, and pigs. I was looking for a non-holiday cookie cutter, and this is what I had, so we're gonna give it a try. These are probably gonna be a little bit sticking to the pastry mat. If you wanna do the best job ever, divide the dough into two batches, and it'll be much more easy to handle and move around, but I wasn't feeling that. So we're just gonna cut the circles out, and then remove them all together. Okay, that's a lot of circles, so. Remove that excess, and you can re-roll the excess into another batch of cookies, and I'm gonna transfer these over onto my baking sheet. If you wanna see some of the things you can do with circle cookies, you can check out my How to Make Orchid Cookies video, and my How to Make, I think there's a rose or flower one. I'll put links to the blog posts or videos, depending on what I can find. Have my circles, and now it's time for a couple pigs. Why not? Batch one into the oven, 375, for about 12 minutes. You wanna watch and keep an eye out. I like my sugar cookies almost browned, but not browned. Totally up to you, though. Brown is tasty, too. Let's give it a try, and see if it tastes as good as it looks. That's nice. I think a sugar cookie should be crispy on the outside, and kind of soft and chewy on the inside. That's what this is. If you like this video, check out my chocolate chocolate chip cookie. They are amazing. Thanks so much for watching. If you like my videos, hit that like button and subscribe, and I will see you soon.