Michelle's Soft Sugar Cookies

*From allrecipes.com*

Michelle's Soft Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup margarine
1 1/2 cups white sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt


Directions

1.Cream the margarine and add the sugar gradually. Beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at time, mixing well after each addition.

2.Stir in the vanilla. Add the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt gradually to the creamed mixture, stirring in by hand. Cover and chill dough overnight.

3.Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

4.Roll dough out on a floured surface to 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick and cut into your favorite shapes. Place cookies onto the prepared baking sheets.

5.Bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 6 to 8 minutes or until cookie has a golden appearance.


My take: I've made sugar cookies in the past but never liked how they came out. Never soft enough. And I've never been a huge sugar cookie fan. I've always thought sugar cookie dough is better than the actual cookies. :) But I like making sugar cookies around the holidays because you get to do all the fun holiday shapes and decorate them. And in recent years I've had some great bakery sugar cookies (i.e. Smart Cookie - so good!) so I wanted to make some sugar cookies that I actually liked. And these passed the test. I'd like to try them again with a different frosting. This time I just used a simple icing recipe from my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, but sometime I'd like to try a good cream cheese frosting. Yum. Anyways, this will now be my go-to sugar cookie recipe. Very good.

Surprise Chocolate Chip Cookies

For a date night last weekend, Jack and I picked out a dessert recipe from a cooking blog I like to get recipes from (Watcha Got Cookin'?), and then bought the ingredients and made the dessert together. We picked these Surprise Chocolate Chip Cookies. Here's the recipe:

Surprise Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 tubes of chocolate chip cookie dough
30 Snickers miniatures

Cut dough into 15 pieces. Place a Snickers bar in the middle of each piece and wrap dough around it, covering completely. Place on cookie sheets (I always put foil on my cookie sheet to prevent sticking, and I only bake one pan of cookies at a time). Bake at the temperature specified on the dough wrapper (I believe the temperature for Nestle dough is 375 degrees) for about 15 minutes.

These were super easy, and they turned out to be pretty good. I might make them again if I want an easy treat, or if I had a little kid that wanted to help make something. But these aren't to die for or anything.

There were lots of other dessert recipes on this blog that I want to try out: Chocolate Truffles, Ribbon Ice Cream Pie, Crater Cake, and Strawberry Whipped Sensation. And The Deathly Dessert sounds awesome, but you'd need lots of people to help you eat it. Looks like I've got some ideas for future date nights!