AnchorMommy

The no-good, absolutely awful, worthless sugar cookie recipe

December 22, 2009 by Shannon

Cookies, cookies, cookies. Everyone’s all about the cookies right now. Baking them, eating them, gifting them. I’ve never been much of a cookie maker (although I love to consume them), except for the winter I was pregnant with Kellan. I used my one personal day of the working year to make about 3 or 4 different kinds — it was a nesting/Christmas instinct gone wild! Thank goodness I did not make the recipe that follows.

It is awful. I’m not sure where it came from, but I picked it up from the Internet a few years back and squirreled it away. Obviously I never made them until now, because if I had, the printout would have been wadded up in a ball and tossed in the recycling bin. Ugh. These cookies are not worth the flour they’re baked with. And in the spirit of sharing, I thought I’d share the horrendous recipe with you. You’re welcome.

Sugar Cookies (a.k.a. Tasteless Hunks of Baked Flour and Sugar)

• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2–2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2–1/3 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1. Mix all the ingredients, except the flour, in a fairly large mixing bowl.
2. Add the flour one cup at a time. Dough should still be a little sticky when you’re done putting flour in. As long as it’s possible to roll it into a ball that will more or less hold its shape, you’re doing fine.
3. Lay out on your working surface: an ungreased cookie sheet, a glass or mug, an open container of sugar, and of course, the dough.
4. Roll dough into balls (about the size of ping pong balls) and put the balls on the cookie sheet. An average sized cookie sheet will hold 12 perfectly.
5. Smear a little bit of cookie dough on the bottom of the glass to get it greasy. Then dip the bottom of the glass in sugar, and flatten one of the balls with it. Repeat until they’re all flat.
6. Bake for about 5 minutes. (Note: The recipe really calls for 5 minutes’ baking time. No joke.) You have to keep a close eye on them. As soon as they start turning brown around the edges, they’re done.
7. Remove them from the baking sheet immediately and place them on a wire rack or dishtowel to cool. Makes 2-3 dozen.

*Cook’s Notes (not mine; these are from the original recipe): The cookies are supposed to be moist rather than crispy. Of course, if you like them crispy, they’re your cookies — simply continue to bake them a moment or two longer.

Okay, problem number one: the cook time. Five minutes? Five minutes of baking? I’m all for a moist cookie, but not for discs of dough. Blech. I think the author meant to say they should be baked for 20-25 minutes. Because that’s how long it took me to make them more cookie-like.

And yes, I can only say they were cookie-like. They don’t really taste like a cookie. More like a round piece of biscotti. They’re not very sweet, or tasty.

Also? The “rub some dough on the bottom of the glass and and dip the glass in sugar” bit doesn’t fly. The dough is too dry to make anything greasy. I had to resort to wetting the glass with a little water instead.

So, in closing, you may want to make this recipe for someone you don’t particularly like. Or, if you’ve found a recipe that seems good, compare it to this one. If it is at all similar, I suggest you wad it up into a ball and toss it. I wish I did that with this one. Not worth the flour they’re made with, I tell you.