Making Penny's rolled sugar cookies - gah, what am I doing wrong???

mariadnoca

Moderator
It says the dough doesn't need to be chilled so thought I'd try this recipe instead of my standard. Sticky dough and my cut cookies are so soft they can't stay in shape to get to the pan. My first batch is in the oven but they don't look good as I had to try and smoosh them back into shape.

I've got the dough in the freezer now hoping to firm it up, but really didn't plan my timing to include that. smileys/frown.gif Need to ice today so they can harden for stacked plating/deliver to party tomorrow.

I used room temp butter - was that wrong? The recipe didn't say.

http://eat.at/swap/forum8/32_Penny%E2%80%99s_Rolled_SugarCookies

 
There could be all kinds of issues at play here. Assuming you measured everything correctly, what's

to say the recipe is correct? I've found a significant incidence of on-line recipes where the recipe is simply . . . wrong. Just because it's on-line doesn't mean it's accurate, properly proof-read or vetted in any way a professional site would handle things. And even professional sites are filled with errors as they're subject to the vagaries resultant from people who input the text.

How do you know at what temperature that original kitchen was? If it was Winter in London, it was going to be colder than Spring in California. How was the flour measured? If not by weight then it could have been off by several tablespoons, resulting in too soft a dough. If it were me, I'd add a bit more flour to the dough until the consistency appeared stable, then I'd chill it a bit.

Good luck, I feel your pain.

 
Chilling is helping, but this is from our T&T file...

So I guess I thought it was foolproof -not! It's warming very fast so it's hurry up and wait for it to rechill between rolling/cutting.

After this I'll go back to my old recipe that calls for chilling the dough. Like I said I know this is from our T&T but I'm finding these taste a lot like grocery bakery sugar cookies, which I'm not a fan of. However, the cold dough eaten as it is delish! LOL! Oh well, it's for a 2 yro birthday party so no biggy except for the time it's taking me -- I fear the icing, which I haven't started yet, won't be set-up enough to stack these on a platter by the morning.

 
Maria, I've made them lots of times with no problem...was the butter frozen?

Butter that was previously frozen can hold a lot of moisture. Maybe the egg was larger than normal?

I always frost the night before and bag them the next morning so I don't know how long it takes to dry. The blow dryer sounds like a good idea. Or stick them in the fridge.

 
The butter was room temp, but previously frozen...

I set it out to thaw the night before. Never had a problem with it. Eggs were my standard large organic TJ ones. Used heavy cream per recipe as I had it on hand. It was damp/drizzly out but that's never made a difference for me with cookies. The dough was much better to deal with once chilled. I don't know what the dealio was with all that, but in the end they came out ok.

I made a quick icing with milk & bit of almond extract. It's firm to the touch, but not dry through - right now it would smoosh like nail polish that only looks dry. Poured rain tonight (finally! been surrounded by monsoons except right smack here) so I'm sure that's not helping matters.

 
The sugar baby icing that's with Penny's recipe sets up nice and firm.

Sometimes frozen butter retains water...not always, but I've had problems before. Glad the chilling helped!

 
Fine, blame it on the Bossa Nova ... "No, no, the bossa nova!" (Sorry, sorry.)

(Did I just date myself? I mean nobody ELSE will 'cause CB won't 'llow it so, why not?)

 
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