For a couple of years in high school I ate lunch every day with the same group of friends. We called ourselves the Lunch Group and we were pretty close at the time. Since then we’ve all moved away from home and lost touch, but I haven’t forgotten one of my very favorite things about those lunches—my friend’s mom’s sugar cookies. He brought a couple of them to school in his lunch almost every day. I don’t know if he just wasn’t that into cookies or if he was just being nice, but he gave me one of those cookies every time I asked if I could have one. I’m not usually that bold, but these cookies are good!
I recall asking his mom for her recipe once and she described how she made them. It was one of those situations where the recipe itself didn’t really exist outside of her head and the memorized movements and measurements that were part of her weekly rhythm. Shortly thereafter, when I was perusing a community cookbook that my mom had, I found a sugar cookie recipe that looked a lot like what my friend’s mom had described. I tried it and was so excited to replicate the Wonderful Sugar Cookies!!! They were just as tender and toothsome as I remembered them being. I wrote the recipe down in my first recipe collection journal and made it several times before it kind of got lost in the shuffle of my daily life.
It’s been years since I thought about those cookies, but they came to mind yesterday. I found the old journal, smiled over some food-related memories of my late high school-early college era, and found the recipe. Things are a bit different now. Since I can’t have gluten I was hoping that the cookies would translate with gluten free flour. I was honestly a little nervous. Would I succeed in capturing this culinary memory from my past?
Yes!!! I was really excited to find that the cookies were just as wonderful as I remembered. You should try them. And, yes, the shortening is necessary. It helps the texture and the butter helps the flavor. It works. Just trust the process.
Ingredients:
- ½ cup/96 grams shortening
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
- 2 ¼ cup/355 grams flour—I used my gluten free blend with an added ¾ teaspoon xanthan gum
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ cup melted butter
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
Preheat the oven to 350-degrees. Beat the shortening and sugar together on medium speed until thoroughly combined. Scrape the bowl. Beat in the egg and vanilla extracts until the mixture gets kind of fluffy. You may need to scrape the bowl again. Whisk together the flour, xanthan gum (if using—don’t add it if your GF blend contains xanthan gum), baking powder, and salt. On low speed, beat this mixture into the shortening mixture. When it is incorporated and looks really crumbly, beat in the butter. The dough should come together in an homogenous mass.
Roll the dough into 1-inch balls and roll the balls into the sugar. Place on a parchment lined or greased baking sheet about 1-inch apart. Gently flatten the balls with the bottom of a glass until they are about ¼-inch thick. Bake for 8-10 minutes until the cookies are just barely cooked. Remove from the oven and allow the cookies to set on the baking sheet for about a minute before removing them to a wire rack to cool completely. Store them in an airtight container.
