Sourdough Sugar Coookies

SOURDOUGH SUGAR COOKIES WITH WHITE FONDANT ICING - RECIPE FEATURE IMAGE

Easy recipe for sourdough sugar cookies that can be iced or decorated. Use up your sourdough discard to create these special sourdough sugar cookies that are perfect for holiday gifting.

Course Dessert, Snack

Cuisine American

Keyword Sourdough Discard

Prep Time 1

Fermentation Time 1

Total Time 1 1

Servings cookies

Calories 58kcal

Equipment

Cookie Cutter

Ingredients

260 g All Purpose Flour
3 g Baking Powder
2 g Salt
150 g Granulated Sugar
170 g Unsalted Butter softened
1 Egg
5 g Vanilla Extract (or almond extract)
100 g Sourdough Starter or sourdough discard

Instructions

Add all purpose flour, baking powder and salt to a mixing bowl and whisk together until well combined. Set this aside.
Add the butter and sugar to a mixing bowl and cream them together using a hand mixer until they are light and creamy (you could also do this in a stand mixer if you prefer).
Add the egg, vanilla extract and sourdough starter to the butter and sugar mixture and beat on medium speed until well combined.
Now, add the wet mixture to the dry ingredient mixture and combine into a soft dough (use low speed on hand mixer or stand mixer or wooden spoon). Don't over mix the dough, it needs to just come together.
Divide the mixture into two balls and place each ball between two sheets of parchment paper.
Use a rolling pin to roll each ball of dough into a "sheet" of dough around half a centimetre thick (¼ inch). Place each sheet of dough onto a flat cookie sheet and place them into the fridge. If you don't have room, just stack the two sheets on top of each other.
Allow the dough to sit in the fridge overnight if you can (up to 48 hours).
When you are ready to bake the sourdough sugar cookies, preheat the oven to 175C (350F).
Take one sheet of dough out at a time and cut the cookies out with a cookie cutter (see notes for how to deal with excess dough). Place the shaped dough onto the cold cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. You want to leave around 5 cm (2 inches) between each cookie.
Place the cookies into the oven for 10 to 12 minutes (watch them closely). You don't want them to brown too much.
Take the cookies out of the oven and allow them to sit on the tray for around 5 minutes before placing them on a wire rack to cool completely.
You can decorate these cookies however you'd like. Royal icing is great if you want to pipe a design on. The white stars and pink circle cookies in these photos have been decorated using fondant icing which I rolled out really thing and cut to the same shape. The cookies with sprinkles were topped with a glaze and then dipped in sprinkles.

Notes

SMALL INGREDIENT MEASURES

I like to weigh everything on a scale that weighs in 1g increments. If you prefer to measure the smaller ingredients, they are as follows:

Half Teaspoon Baking Powder
One Quarter Teaspoon Salt
Two Teaspoons Vanilla Extract

VANILLA EXTRACT can be replaced with almond extract if you'd prefer.

BUTTER should be softened to room temperature - but don't let it start to melt.

SUGAR used in this recipe is fine white granulated sugar. You can use other sugars but they will alter the texture of the recipe.

MIXING INSTRUCTIONS

You can mix this dough in a number of ways:

use an electric hand mixer (I find this the most convenient way to do it)
use a stand mixer (this way you can also bring the dough together in the stand mixer using the paddle attachment).
mix everything by hand (you'll need your muscles to cream the butter and sugar together).
use a Thermomix (speed 4 is fine to cream the butter and eggs, use dough mode to bring the dough together).

EXCESS COOKIE DOUGH

Once you've cut out the shapes from a sheet of dough, you can gather up the excess dough and re roll it to cut more cookies. If the dough is too soft, roll it out again between 2 sheets of parchment paper and pop in the fridge for 10 minutes to firm up.

SOFT DOUGH

If at any point the dough seems too soft to work with, just put it back in the fridge. Don't leave cookies that have been cut out on the counter. If you need to set them aside before you bake them, pop them back into the fridge.

FERMENTATION TIME

You do not have to ferment this dough. You can roll the dough out and place into the fridge for just one hour to firm up before you cut the cookies. However, the option is there to leave the dough in the fridge for up to 48 hours of cold fermentation. The sourdough flavor will develop more if you leave the dough to ferment in the fridge.

FREEZING COOKIE DOUGH

This dough is fine to freeze. I find the easiest way is to cut the cookies into the shapes, snap freeze on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and then pop the cookie dough shapes into a zip loc bag. You can then place the frozen cookies onto cookie sheets when you are ready to bake. You can bake them from frozen, they will just take an extra few minutes to bake through. Store cookie dough in the freezer for up to 6 weeks.

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