Sham-Rockin' Cookies

Good morning, friends! Hope you’re making the whole daylight savings transition nicely this morning! I’m getting ready to head out for my group run this morning, but I wanted to share a great cookie recipe with you before I do!

If you’re looking for something fun and festive to make for St. Patty’s Day, look no further! These Sham-Rockin’ Cookies will do the trick!

I actually made these a couple of weeks ago. It was my friend Adam’s birthday, and he requested sugar cookies as his birthday treat. I have never been a huge sugar cookie girl, so I had to go in search of a new recipe to try for this. One type of sugar cookie I can never pass up, though, are those thick, icing-covered Lofthouse cookies from the grocery store. They taste like a giant ball of sugar and positively melt in your mouth! Yep, that was the kind of cookie I wanted to make for Adam!

After scouring around the internet, I found a few possibilities for recipes, but they all made insane amounts of cookies! I scaled it back, and what I came up with gave me about 3 dozen. Of course, the number you will get depends on the size of your cookie cutter, but these were about average size–similar to what you would get if you purchased a package of cookies at the store.

These do take a couple days to make because you have to chill the dough, but they are worth it. I had so much fun putting them together!

The secret ingredient? Sour cream. It yields a fluffy but dense cookie that’s not at all sweet. The sweetness comes from the icing. They were a huge hit with my co-workers and especially with the birthday boy. He emailed me at about 9:30 the morning I brought them in to let me know he’d eaten 8 of them already! Good work, Adam!

Sham-Rockin’ Cookies

Makes about 3 dozen

1/3 cup butter

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1/3 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/3 teaspoon baking soda

1/3 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup sour cream

1 2/3-2 cups flour (until desired consistency for rolling)

Start out by creaming together the butter and sugar with a hand or stand mixer. Add in the egg, sour cream, and vanilla and mix until everything is incorporated.

Then, mix in the dry ingredients to form a dough. I added 1 2/3 cups of flour and that left me with a somewhat sticky dough, but remember, you are refrigerating it, so it doesn’t have to be workable at this point.

Cover the dough (it doesn’t need to be tightly wrapped),

and refrigerate it at least 6-8 hours or overnight. Mine ended up being more like 24 hours of refrigeration since I made the dough one night and rolled and baked the cookies the next night.

{Note to self: clean out fridge.}

Once the dough is nice and chilled, preheat your oven to 425*. Put a good amount of flour onto your board and get ready to roll!

Don’t forget to have your super cute cookie cutter standing by!

I needed quite a bit of flour on the board, plus on the rolling pin, plus on top of the dough to get it not too sticky. Just add it liberally to start. I have never had cookies not turn out from putting too much flour on the board, so go to town!

I rolled my dough out to about 1/4 inch thickness. Remember, these cookies are going to puff up, so you don’t want to make them too thick to begin with. Also, make sure you flour your cookie cutter before making the shapes so the dough doesn’t stick to that, either.

EEEEEE!!! This part gets me excited! Love making cute things!

Put the cut outs onto an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake Me!

Mine took about 5 minutes–yep, that’s it! But keep an eye on yours. They could take up to 8. I find that baking sugar cookies is a tricky business. They’re fickle and very sensitive to temperature changes depending on ovens. I happen to think my oven runs a little hot, so your cookies might take a little more time. Let them sit for a minute or two on the cookie sheet when you take them out, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Check out the fluff factor!

Once all your cookies are cooled, we frost!

You definitely need a sweet frosting for these because the cookies themselves are not all that sweet. This recipe paired perfectly with them!

Sugar Cookie Frosting

Based on this recipe.

2 cups confectioner’s sugar

1/4 cup butter-flavored shortening

2 1/2 T. milk

1/2 t. vanilla extract

food coloring

Cream the confectioner’s sugar and shortening until smooth. Slowly mix in milk and vanilla extract until frosting is smooth and stiff (approximately 4-5 minutes).

Luscious!

Add in your food coloring, and start decorating!

Like I said, these are NOT sweet cookies, so go big on the icing! All of the sweetness in the cookies comes from it!

I did most of the cookies sans sprinkles since Adam doesn’t like sprinkles.

But . . .

I do!

I had to taste test, of course! I’d say they’re pretty darn close to the real deal that you’d get in the store. And judging by the speed with which my co-workers inhaled them, I think they’d be a hit with any crowd!

If you’re like me and like to make holiday-themed treats, these will not disappoint! Think how much fun they would be to make in egg shapes and decorate like cute little Easter eggs!

Enjoy!

About these ads