Cookies | Ladies Learn

If I’m making cookies, 9 times out of 10, it’s these. My mom has made them my whole life. In fact, it never occurred to me (until later of course) that chocolate chip cookies didn’t ‘normally’ have oatmeal in them. That’s just what I knew. Apparently, this recipe came from her best friend, who got it from a friend, who probably got it from a friend. That person probably stole them from Mrs. Fields, because they’re pretty dang close. My mom and I modified them a bit to make them ‘fluffier.’

DISCLAIMER: I cannot be responsible for any weight gain, over indulgence of cookies, or diet mishaps that may occur from baking these cookies. You will want to eat the whole batch, I promise. So do a little meditating before making them and pray for some self-control, you’ll need it.

What you’ll need:

1 cup of butter (salted is best, unsalted works, just add more salt)—make sure it’s room temp

1 cup of granulated sugar

1 cup of brown sugar (golden)

2 eggs

1 teaspoon of vanilla

2 cups of flour (when I’m feeling guilty, I use half whole-wheat flour, makes them calorie-free…haha)

2 1/2 cups of rolled oats (It’s VERY important that you do NOT use instant oats, your cookies will not turn out right)

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

1/4 teaspoon of salt (1/2 if you use unsalted butter)

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup finely chopped milk chocolate (I use a Hershey bar or Kisses—freeze these for better chopping)

1/2 cup walnuts (or pecans)

Pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees

Start by mixing the wet ingredients:

First, cream together butter and sugar

Add in eggs

And then the vanilla

Cream together until well mixed, it should look like this

Set wet ingredients aside and mix dry ingredients:

Flour

Oats

Baking powder and baking soda

Salt

Then mix dry ingredients well with a fork

After dry ingredients are mixed, add the wet ingredients

Mix together

Feel free to taste the dough at this point, you know, to make sure it’s not poisoned or anything…

Next add in your semi-sweet chocolate

Then chop up your milk chocolate if needed:

Either by pounding with a mallet

Or in a chopper

You want your milk chocolate to be pretty finely chopped, this will create little ‘slivers’ of milk chocolate in your cookies…mmm…

Add to dough

Then add the nuts. As you can see, I don’t measure this part. I just go by ‘feel’, yeah that looks about right.

Then mix all the goodies in until you have a scrumptious looking dough like this. Good place to do the ‘poison’ test.

Roll dough into balls, about 1” thick

Place on a cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes

The secret to making moist, soft cookies is when you think they’re done, it’s too late. You want them to be just barely golden, flip over a cookie to see if the bottom is golden to determine if it’s done or not. If the bottom’s a little golden, they’re perfect.

Place cookies on a paper towel to cool.

Enjoy!

I have also just frozen the dough balls, to bake up fresh warm cookies. I will note that the dough is just as tasty frozen as it is not, so this trick doesn’t really work for not eating the dough.

Click here to download the recipe in PDF format!

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I guess I can’t really call these “Sarah’s Sugar Cookies” as the recipe is really my moms, but those of you that know me, know me for my sugar cookies– hence the title. But credit is due to my mother, she is really the sugar cookie pro—and taught me the art of making sugar cookies!

If you haven’t had the pleasure of indulging in my sugar cookies (or my moms), you’re life is not yet complete. Haha. I don’t want to brag or anything, but they’re awesome. Even Aubry who doesn’t like sugar cookies, loves them. They are soft, sweet and delicious! My one-year-old just can’t handle it while I write this post, he knows how good they are and at this very moment is pulling on me yelling “COOS! COOS!” I know baby, I want some too.

You can duplicate my sugar recipe just in time for your spring parties! I invested in a great little box ‘o cookie cutters from Wilton (you can get them from Amazon here ) and I love it, I have over 101 shapes–including every letter and number, so it gives me lots of options!

The secret to this recipe is: PREPARATION. You will need to refrigerate your dough overnight (or in the freezer for 2 hours) so I like to make it the night before I want to bake the cookies. You’ll also need time to soften your butter and cream cheese, so account for that too.

Here goes! At the end of this post, you will finds a PDF file with a recipe card for your printing pleasure:

Sarah’s Sugar Cookies:

Ingredients:

1 Cup unsalted butter (softened to room temperature)

2 Cups granuatled sugar

2 Eggs

2 tsp. vanilla (don’t skimp and use imitation, that’s no good)

¼ Cup milk

4 Cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt (skip this if you had to use salted butter—they’re sugar cookies, not salt cookies)

I like to get out my butter a few hours before I start baking to soften it to room temperature. You can microwave it so its soft, but it’s not ideal (you don’t want to melt it, it changes the consistency).

Cream together butter and sugar. I like to mix these two for a while—really well, making sure there are no lumps of butter.

Then add the eggs. Mix.

Then add the vanilla.

Use pure vanilla, it’s just that much yummier than imitation. Costco has it for a pretty good deal.

Don’t forget to add in your milk!

Make sure all wet ingredients are mixed well, with no chunks of butter.

Set wet mixture aside.

In a separate large bowl, mix together dry ingredients:

Flour.

Baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Mix dry ingredients well with a fork.

Then add the wet mixture to the dry.

Mix all ingredients together, forming one cohesive dough.

Then comes the magic part: place dough in a covered container in the refridgerator overnight, OR in the freezer for 2 hours. Why? Can’t I just skip this step? NO! In order for the dough to roll out properly, you need it to stiffen. If you try and roll it out fresh from mixing, your dough will be thin and your cookies will be hard. So please, I beg you, don’t skip this part!

Once your dough has stiffened:

Make sure to clean off your surface where you will be rolling out your dough.

Lightly dust area with flour.

Take out about ¼ of your dough, shape into a ball, flatten, and roll out with a rolling pin.

Since your dough is stiff, you’re going to have to use your muscles to roll it out into a nice flat surface.

The key here is to roll out your dough EVENLY. (my mom never let me do this part as a kid, she didn’t trust me. I thought that was pretty mean until now, I totally understand, I don’t trust anyone else to roll out my dough either!) I like to roll it out a bit, then get down at eye level to the dough and just run my hand over it checking for unevenness. If your dough is uneven, your cookies will be uneven—causing them to be crunchy on one side, and soft on the other…that’s just annoying.

So once you have a nice, beautiful even sheet of cookie dough, have at it! Get a fun cookie cutter, dust it in flour and cut away. Make sure to press pretty firmly, all the way to the bottom of your surface. Then, using a metal spatula, scrape the cookie shape off using one swift motion (so as not to lose the shape of the cookie).

Place cookies onto a non-stick cookie sheet.

Bake at 325 for 9 minutes.

Check your cookies after 9 minutes. This is the other trick to the recipe: your cookies will NOT look done on the top.

What you want to do is flip one cookie over and check the BOTTOM of it. If the bottom is slightly golden, then you’re done. If the tops of the cookies are golden, you’ve cooked them too long…sorry. It’s okay, all is not lost, your cookies will just be little crunchier. Now I will say that based on where you live, and your oven, you may need to adjust the time slightly. Mine even varies depending on the day, weird. Sometimes I even start out at 7 minutes, just so I don’t risk over cooking them.

Transfer cookies immediately to a paper towel (if you leave them on the sheet, they will continue to cook).

Once you’ve baked all your cookies, make your frosting, then go read a book, paint your toe nails, or watch the latest episode of The Bachelor while your cookies cool. Please don’t frost them warm! This will cause your frosting to melt and get gooey and just plain weird looking on your cookies.

Cream cheese frosting: