The Best Sugar Cookies in the World

It has taken me 35 years (the number of years I have been baking on my own) to finally find the mother of all sugar cookie recipes. Thanks to Katie Wennerstrom who was willing to share this recipe that she got from her Mother in Law (thank you whoever you are). I love my sugar cookies to be thick and soft with some density and not too sweet. I like the frosting to be what adds the sweetness to the cookie.

(pssst The secret is the buttermilk)

This takes 2-3 days to make.

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:
4 cups Flour
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup shortening
2 eggs slightly beaten
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda

In a medium bowl beat eggs, buttermilk, vanilla then baking soda last of all. Set aside to let buttermilk and soda react. Small bubbles will form.

In the bowl of Kitchen Aid sift the flour, salt and baking powder. Add the sugar. Add the shortening and beat with dough hook to a cornmeal consistency. (note: I don't know if you can do this in a mixing bowl with hand held beater because dough is very stiff)

Turn mixer on low and add the liquid mixture. When completely incorporated, turn mixer on high and beat for 5 minutes. If dough is too sticky add a little flour, but dough should be soft.

Take dough out of mixer, pat into a flat oval, wrap in plastic wrap and chill in fridge over night.

Next day preheat oven to 400 degrees. Roll dough onto a floured surface to about 1/4" thick. Cut shapes and place 2" apart on un-greased baking sheet. Cookies will puff up spread slightly.
Bake 7-9 minutes exactly. Do not brown. Remove from oven and cool on rack 10 minutes. Remove from pan and when completely cooled, frost with the following frosting recipe.

Frosting
Ingredients:

1/4 cup shortening
1/4 cup margarine softened to room temp
1 pound powdered sugar
1-3 TBS milk
1 tsp almond extract

Cream shortening and margarine together in Kitchen Aid. Add powdered sugar alternately with milk until all sugar is used and frosting is right consistency. Add extract.

4th Generation English Toffee recipe by Paula

After that great entry on how chocolate makes the toffee, I know you are all saying, "Where's the toffee?". So, here is the recipe for the "greatest toffee in the world". Remember, use the best milk chocolate you can find and use lots of it.

In all the batches of toffee my Mom would make, every once in awhile, a batch wouldn't turn out. I remember her saying that it must be the butter. One thing I learned this year when making the toffee is that you have to use the best quality butter. Walt had bought a lot of cheap, store brand butter when it was on sale. It greatly affected all my holiday baking but especially the toffee. The butter had too much water to milk solids and the toffee separated in the cooking and caused the chocolate to be mushy.

Another tip about making the toffee is that you can't make it when it's cloudy, raining or snowing. I don't know how they can call it English toffee, when it is always raining there. When it is sunny out, I drop everything else and make the toffee.

And finally, it is really a winter thing. We never make toffee in the Summer.

English Toffee

Ingredients:

1 pound unsalted Butter
1 pound light Brown Sugar
1 pound good Milk Chocolate, finely chopped or grated
Almonds or Walnuts, toasted and finely ground
Candy thermometer
11"x17" jelly roll pan

Prepare nuts and chocolate and set aside.

In a medium size pot, melt the butter slowly over low heat. When the butter is just melted but not foaming add the brown sugar and stir thoroughly with a wooden spoon until brown sugar is incorporated.

Insert candy thermometer without tip touching bottom of pan, and turn heat up to medium-low.

Slowly bring the mixture to a rolling, rapid boil. Slowly is the operative word.
Let mixture boil, without stirring, until it reaches the hard crack setting (300-310) on the thermometer. This should take about 30 minutes if done properly. Do not rush this step.

While mixture is cooking, sprinkle half the grated nuts over pan covering completely in a single layer. Then sprinkle half the chocolate over nuts also covering completely and liberally.

When toffee mixture has reached the hard crack setting remove immediately and pour over the previously prepared jelly roll pan. Tip jelly roll pan to spread mixture as far and evenly as possible. Mixture may not cover entire pan area.

Wait about 5 minutes for mixture to cool slightly, then sprinkle the remaining chocolate over the still hot toffee. Let chocolate sit and melt for several minutes. When chocolate has changed color and become darker, it is melted. Take a metal knife or spatula and spread melted chocolate evenly over the toffee. Then sprinkle the remaining nuts over the top.

Put toffee in a cool place for several hours (can be refrigerated) until chocolate is set and toffee is cool. Cut or break into bite size chunks. Store in airtight container. Will keep for months.

The Last Remaining Piece of VanLeer Chocolate in the World

Funny Story.

For many years my Mom made her famous English Toffee. She made it for gifts and then started a small cottage industry selling to friends and family. She would make so much that she would go through hundreds of pounds of chocolate each holiday season (she only made toffee in the winter during proper weather conditions). She bought her chocolate wholesale, but in order to do so she had to purchase a minimum amount. So, she would offer to buy chocolate for her friends at church so they could add to her order and they could get the wholesale price.

After testing numerous brands, she found a brand she loved called VanLeer. It had the best melting capabilities and the perfect flavor. I remember sitting in her house tasting samples of the different milk chocolates they made and determining which one was the very best for the toffee. They all had slight but very distinct flavor differences.

The orders came in 50 pound boxes with huge 10# slabs. My children were fed chocolate by their Grandmother from the time they were infants, and feasted on pound blocks that she would cut off and give them to nibble on, like a giant lollipop.

I am convinced the chocolate makes the toffee. There are probably thousands of "the best English Toffee" made out there, but none of them could hold a candle to Mom's and I am sure it was because of the chocolate.

Unfortunately, VanLeer went out of business and sold their operation to Caillebaut. I have nothing against Caillebaut, but their milk chocolate wasn't the same and they did not keep the VanLeer recipe.

Mom was determined to find every last ounce of VanLeer chocolate before it became extinct. She talked to Caillebaut and convinced them to send her the last of their stock. But finally, it ran out and Mom, so disheartened, discontinued her toffee business. That was about 12 years ago.

Fast forward to 2011. I was visiting an old friend of Mom's who used to order chocolate from Mom when she would put her order in to VanLeer. Gwen wanted to show me something in her pantry. It was a container filled with a 5 pound block of VanLeer chocolate! It had to be at least 12 years old! It had been wrapped so well that it was in almost perfect condition. She offered it to me as she was no longer able to cook or utilize the chocolate.

So, armed with probably the last existing piece of Van Leer chocolate in the entire world, I made once more, a batch of The Best English Toffee in the world!

Gooey German Chocolate Cake Bars

okay, here's the thing...sometimes i get into these moods where i need to cook. in the last two days, i've made corn bread, chocolate covered oreos, eggplant and tomato stacks, and these. i affectionately call this sugar casserole. or diabetes. i'm just being honest here. i found a recipe on some random blog that used cake mix as a base for cookie bars, and was topped with sweetened condensed milk and thought, "hmmm, i wonder if this could be a good way to get rid of all that random junk in my pantry." it was. behold, gooey german chocolate cake bars.


warning: this stuff is not pretty. see the picture? don't mind my half eaten blob and dirty fork off to the side there.  if you actually wait for it to cool (i clearly could not), it can be cut into bars.  despite the hideous appearance, i have received rave reviews from everyone that has tried it. so! go make it.

mix these together until they form a dough:
1 box yellow cake mix
1 egg
1 stick butter

press the dough into a foil-lined 8 by 8 glass dish.

dump whatever you want on top. no, seriously. w-h-a-t-e-v-e-r you want. i can't even give you super accurate measurements because i just started dumping, but my best guess would be:
1 bag (3-ish cups?) german chocolate cake marshmallows (i found them at target. chocolate marshmallows covered in coconut. seriously. i'm guessing normal marshmallows plus a 1/2 cup of shredded coconut would do the trick, if need be)
1 cup chopped pecans
10(+...) oz chopped chocolate of your choice (chocolate chips work, i assume. i just used all the random leftover chocolate bars in the pantry)

then top with the magic sauce:
1 cup of sweetened condensed milk

bake at 350 for 25 minutes. take it out before the marshmallows burn. don't try to eat it right away...trust me on this one...remember the picture? let cool 30 minutes. it WILL be rough getting that junk off the foil, but it's better than trying to get it off the dish. cut into squares. go into sugar coma (less of an instruction, more of a warning).

the sweetened condensed milk seeps through the marshmallows and keeps the cake dough base really moist, plus it mixes well with the chocolate.  the marshmallows get crusty on top but keep their gooey-ness and help everything to stick together well.  there is something about that yellow cake flavor that makes these taste sooooo good...but i'd be interested to try different flavors too.  did i mention that you need to make these?

Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream

Parry and I experimented with several homemade ice cream recipes with the ice cream maker he got for his birthday the summer of 2011. Among them were a curry ice cream, basil/lemon balm sorbet and this one for hazelnut ice cream. The following recipe is so simple but so amazingly creamy and intense in flavor as to seem almost to be a Gelato.

Ingredients:

370 grams Nutella
410 grams evaporated milk
1/4 cup hazelnut syrup
hazelnuts, toasted and chopped

Pre-freeze the bowl of your ice cream maker according to the manufacturers instructions.

Combine the Nutella and evaporated milk in a saucepan. Heat on medium-low until Nutella is melted and thouroughly blended into the milk.
Remove from the heat and add in the hazelnut syrup. Whisk until completely incorporated.
Pour into a bowl and refrigerate several hours or overnight until well chilled.
Process in ice cream machine. When ice cream is just about done, add in the toasted, chopped hazelnuts.
Freeze in freezer.

Swiss Hazelnut Torte with Chocolate Hazelnut Frosting

When we were in Switzerland in 1992, the mother of our dear friend Thomas Caratsch, made this torte for us. Parry loved it so much that she gave us the recipe. Parry and Walt went on to win the award of "Best European torte" in a cake contest in New Jersey with this recipe.

The original traditional recipe called for a mocha frosting but we have updated it to add to the hazelnut theme.

Here then is the original recipe for the Hazelnut Torte with an updated chocolate hazelnut frosting.

Ingredients:

6 Egg yolks
200-250 grams sugar
1/2 package vanilla sugar
150 grams hazelnuts, ground (3/4 pound whole nuts)
30 grams flour
30 grams potato flour or corn starch
6 Egg whites

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and flour 9" spring form pan.
Beat egg yolks and sugar with electric mixer on medium til light and thickened (about 5 minutes).
Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
Add egg yolk mixture to dry ingredients and beat on medium til blended.
In a separate medium bowl (preferably a copper bowl) beat egg whites to stiff peaks.
Gently fold egg whites into rest of mixture until well blended.
Pour batter into spring form pan and bake for 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Cool on rack. When completely cooled remove from spring form pan.
Frost with a chocolate butter cream frosting (see note below).
Garnish with coarsely chopped hazelnuts.

For Frosting:

Make a chocolate butter cream frosting adding Nutella until desired consistency and flavor is obtained.

Nutella Continued: Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies

If you love hazelnuts, these cookies can not be trumped. They are soft and chewy with crunchy, toasted hazelnuts. They are unlike any other cookies I have ever had. Adding the extra Hazelnut syrup intensifies the flavor and keeps the cookies soft for weeks.
If I have any cookies left over I use some Trader Joe's Vanilla ice cream and make fabulous ice cream sandwiches.

Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 11 oz jar of Nutella
1/4 cup shortening
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk (or substitute with hazelnut syrup for a more intense flavor)
1/4 cup hazelnut syrup (such as Torrani's)
1/2 cup chopped, toasted hazelnuts
1/2 cup whole hazelnuts finely ground in food processor
sifted powder sugar

Directions:
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl; set aside

Combine Nutella and shortening in a large mixing bowl, beat with an electric mixer on medium to high speed until combined. Add sugar; beat on medium speed until fluffy. Add vanilla and eggs, beat just until combined.

Alternately add flour mixture and milk and 1/4 cup syrup to creamed mixture, beating on medium speed just until combined. Use a spoon to stir in the 1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts. cover and chill for several hours or until firm.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Shape the dough into 1 or 1 1/2 inch balls. Roll the balls in finely ground hazelnuts, then roll in powdered sugar. Place the balls 2 inches apart on a lightly greased cookie sheet. (They will spread a crinkle as they bake.) Bake for 8-10 minutes or until surface is cracked and cookies are set. Cool cookies on a wire rack.

Makes about 6 dozen.