One of my mother’s favorite dishes from my early years is this braised flank steak. Feel free to swap out chuck steak or flap meat since they were both inexpensive back then. Simple but tasty ingredients are used. In addition to a green vegetable like broccoli or asparagus, it tastes great with buttered noodles or white beans.
| Prep Time: | 45 mins |
| Cook Time: | 15 mins |
| Additional Time: | 8 hrs |
| Total Time: | 9 hrs |
| Servings: | 30 |
| Yield: | 30 cookies |
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar
- 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon almond extract
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 large egg white
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 cups confectioners’ sugar
- assorted food coloring
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line 2 baking pans with parchment paper.
- Mix confectioners’ sugar, butter, egg, vanilla, and almond extract in a bowl with an electric mixer until it comes together well and butter is not clumpy. Slowly mix in baking soda and cream of tarter, then flour. When the dough becomes tougher to mix, use your hands to mash and knead until the dough is completely formed.
- Transfer dough to a large, floured work surface. Carefully roll to a thickness of about 1 centimeter or a little more; the thicker the dough, the softer the cookie. (These cookies will puff up in the oven.) Add flour to your work surface, the dough, and the rolling pin as needed.
- Cut out as many shapes as you can cleverly fit in the dough. Remove any extra dough from the perimeters of your cookies. Save all the scraps and roll into another ball for the next round of rolling and cutting out cookies.
- Delicately transfer the cookies to the prepared baking sheets, leaving at least 1 inch of space between each one.
- Bake one tray at a time on the middle rack of the preheated oven, until cookies are still white on top and have fluffed up, 7 to 8 minutes. If they brown lightly along the edges, they should be removed immediately. Let the cookies sit on the tray for 1 minute and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool while you bake the second sheet of cookies.
- While cookies are cooling, prepare frosting by beating butter, egg white, and vanilla together in a bowl until creamy. Slowly mix in confectioners’ sugar until smooth. Divide frosting into smaller bowls. Add 2 to 3 drops food coloring per bowl and mix well.
- Apply a thick layer of frosting to cooled cookies, spreading as smoothly as you can. Leave cookies on wire racks and cover with waxed paper. Let sit until frosting has hardened, 8 hours to overnight.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 234 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 33 g |
| Cholesterol | 35 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 g |
| Protein | 2 g |
| Saturated Fat | 7 g |
| Sodium | 48 mg |
| Sugars | 23 g |
| Fat | 11 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
inexplicably, I lost my favorite sugar cookie recipe. I made this one because it appeared to be similar to my favorite. However, the flavor didn’t compare. I will make this one again because the dough doesn’t require refrigeration. I sometimes don’t plan far ahead enough to wait 12 hours to bake. But my search continues …