Holiday Sugar Cookies 101

Alton teaches Santa to make a basic Christmas sugar-cookie dough.

Holiday Sugar Cookies 101 Alton: Things about Christmas cookies is you want to come up with just one kind of butter that can make a whole bunch of cookies. Okay, then we can roll them and cut them or make a little balls and drop cookies. Ice box cookies make them a log and so many pieces. And the most versatile cookie dough I know of sugar cookie dough. Alright Santa, the most important concept in all of baking is the creaming method. Okay, and we’re doing the creaming the method. We always have going to have three teams of ingredients, okay? Here we got the dry team. Three cups of flour, a quarter teaspoon of salt and three quarter teaspoon of baking powder, the wet team; one egg. Santa: A chicken egg? Alton: Yes, chicken egg and a tablespoon of milk. Now, over here the fat team. The fat team is going to be played by two sticks -- that’s one cup of butter and one cup of sugar. Now the goal here is to beat these together until they become nice and lightly colored. Alright, we will get 0:58 a little bit lighter. In the mean time, I want you to go over there and sift those dry goods. Santa: Me? Alton: Sift? Santa: Don’t you have else to do this. Alton: No, I don’t have else. Santa: No. Alton: You sift that right under that mat. Alright, see how this is light now. It’s almost white, okay? Now we can add the wet works. Nice and slow. Santa: I’m done. Alton: Perfect, time to add that to the mixer. We’ll just turn this down to the lowest speed and very, very, very slowly add the flour. We pulls away from the side, we are done. Santa: Well, let’s eat. Alton: Slow down big guy. We still have to bake the cookies but before we can do that, we’ve got to refrigerate this. We’re put them in up in the fridge. Santa: Reindeer games. Alton: Separating your dough into two separate slabs so make it a lot easier to handle on down the line. Just as to stash in your chill chest for about two hours. Santa: But what is that? Too flour? Alton: No, if we were to roll our cookies with flour, we might produce such too much glutton and might make the cookies tough. So I like to roll with powdered sugar. Alright, so let’s going to put this on here and sprinkle a little bit right on top and you don’t want to go overboard. And what we’re looking for here Santa is a quarter inch thickness, and let me just give you a little advice, don’t think about rolling it out and do a circle. Just try to keep it rectangular. Okay? Santa: Alright. Alton: You’re ready. You’ll good. Apron? Santa: Oh, good. Thanks to you. Alton: Okay. It’s all yours. Santa: Here we go. Alton: Okay. Lesson two, the more we rolled the cookies the tougher they’re going to be. So we want to be very efficient and get the most out of the first cut as possible. Okay, so that means pre-positioning all of our cookie cutters. And kind of making sure that were getting the most out of them. Okay? And just kind of spread them out here and we should be able to get a lot of cookies out of this, hard to believe by now. Santa: Oh. Alton: Sorry, wrong holiday but hey you kind of ghost? Santa: Wrong story. Alton: Now looks about right. That’s very, very little waste tips. So now just reach over and use your weight and -- Santa: Alright. Alton: Press those all up. Santa: All of my weight. Alton: No. Part of your weight. Straight down, no scooting, no twisting and I’ll get another pan here, okay? Santa: No scooting. No -- Alton: Straight down. Okay? Here’s another little trick. I’m going to use the spatula to move the cookies to the pan. We’re not going to take off the cutter until we get it there. Okay? So you press down good. Right? Santa: Yes. Alton: Alright. So just going to slide under and get hold of the cookie, pull it away. The scrap will come off and we just move it over and there you go. Okay? Now, here’s another rule. What is this? Number three I think. We want to make sure that there is at least an inch of free space around each cookie. Okay? That way they won’t crash together in the oven and it also promote brown, okay? Now, I like to do my baking right on the parchment but some folks like using those new -- you know, reusable mats they’re making. Santa: Silicon and fiber glass? No grease and necessarily can withstand temperatures and excess of 450 degrees. Alton: I’m impressed. Santa: Julia Child as for bakers does. Alton: Oh, some Julia gets what Julia asks for huh? You just have say that save it. We will come back and rotate this in about four minutes. Santa: Oh. Alton: We need to time to make the frosting. Santa: Frosting, I like frost you know. Alton: We’re making a royal icing for our cookies, okay? It starts with four egg whites beaten with one teaspoon of vanilla and these goes to a kind of foamy prop. Santa: Wait a minute. You’re using raw eggs. What do you trying to do? Kill Santa? Alton: What do you think even drinking there all night? Santa: No. I haven’t. Alton: Well, don’t worry. I’ve actually using pasteurized eggs. You can also use three ounces of pasteurized egg whites, they come in carton from the grocery store. Santa: Oh, thing, thing. Merry Christmas! It’s actually within three times olds. Oh, what’s up with the cup? Alton: Oh, it’s my invention. You know, it’s really hard to sift confectionary sugar into a mixture and we need to work four cups into here. That’s a whole pounds you know. It’s some like I put a cup that I cut the bottom out of up into the bottom of my sifter. Now there are some rules to frostings like anything else. Number one always remember that the frosting is going to get darker in 24 hours. Okay, so either want to make your frosting a little bit lighter than you actually wanted or you should put it in your refrigerator covered with plastic wrap for a day before frosting. Then you could light it up with some white frosting if you want. Also you need to remember to work with very small amounts. I mean look I have made this green here and I probably got enough for an entire forest to trees.