A Cookie, for Goodness Sake.

Sometimes, you really just need a cookie. I had a very busy week and since I found myself with some downtime (bordering on boredom), I decided to break out a cookbook and make a snack. If you remember, I mentioned a book a while back called Ratio by Michael Ruhlman. Ruhlman’s book is full of basic ratios for cooking baked goods like breads, batter based foods, cookies and the like. Its subtitle is “The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking” and I think it sticks to that. There is nothing overly complicated about his approach or the recipes shared; instead, we are given simple fundamental ratios to build on.

Now, back to my snack…I wanted a cookie. Or three. I took his recipe for a basic sugar cookie and halved it and added my own topping. Remember, since I used the weights of the ingredients, the listed measurements are approximate. Here is the recipe, halved.

Simple Sugar Cookies

1 stick of unsalted butter, softened

4 ounces of sugar (about ½ cup)

1 ounce of egg (1 egg’s contents weigh about 2 oz. I beat the egg in a small bowl and added to my ingredients until the scale went up one full ounce.)

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon salt (I used Kosher salt…not sure if that’s standard, but it worked well for me!)

6 ounces all-purpose flour (about ¾ cup)

½ teaspoon baking powder

Topping:

2 tbsp powdered sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350.

11. Blend butter, sugar, egg and vanilla together very well.

22.   Add remaining ingredients and slowly combine. You don’t want flour everywhere!! It will not look like there      is enough liquid for the amount of flour, but, keep mixing. It’ll be fine.

33.  Chill dough in the fridge, covered in plastic wrap, until the dough is chilled through-about 15-20 minutes.

44. Roll into ping pong sized balls and bake for about 12 minutes on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

55. Combine powdered sugar and cinnamon in small bowl and dust over cookies.

If you want, the dough can be rolled out and you can cut shapes out of it, but they taste perfectly fine topped with the powdered sugar. The dough is light and they are soft on the inside and just barely crunchy on the outside-more firm than crunchy actually. Do try these, you’ll thank me!