The Best Sugar Cookies for Coffee Breaks (and any occasion really)

Hello all my caffeine brothers and sisters!

I'm so glad to be here in this community, can't believe I didn't find you sooner considering I'm quite in love with coffee. We've been having this crazy love affair for about 2 decades. We're exceptionally loyal to each other and I've only really been adding Decaf to our relationship recently for health reasons. I wake up greeting Coffee with a smile every morning!

I jest of course, lol.
But in all seriousness ...

What goes really well with coffee at any time of the day?

Biscuits!!

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I've been messing around with baking and finding the best recipes for the last 6 to 7 years. There have been a few recipes that I've kept for the long haul, they just seem to be (almost) flop proof and are super tasty.

Unfortunately this recipe does not cater for any dietary requirements. I'll try some in the future that are healthier alternatives and when I find one that sticks, I'll let you all know.
I've included a section at the end about biscuits as gifts too - because, well who in their right mind doesn't enjoy receiving home baked biscuits right?

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Sugar Cookies

Ingredients & Instructions:

1 cup softened butter (or margarine depending on your preference)
1 cup castor sugar
Cream these two together in a stand mixer or with an electric hand beater.

Put your oven on to 180*C to preheat

1 teaspoon vanilla essence (or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract ~ the good stuff)
0.5 (half) teaspoon caramel essence
1 large egg
Add these to the creamed sugar butter mixture and beat until well combined.

3 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
0.5 (half) teaspoon salt
Sift these together into the well combined mixture (by hand), a bit at a time and then once all incorporated, switch mixer to bread kneading paddle and mix.

Roll out the mixture onto a LIGHTLY floured surface or covered with clingfilm to 6-7mm thick and use your favourite cookie cutters to cut out the shapes you desire. This mixture is really excellent at holding it's shape through the cooking process and I have never needed to chill the dough before hand which saves time.

I put foil or baking paper over my baking sheets instead of using spray and cook or grease or anything like that - it makes sure that the cookies come off the surface easily and the foil/baking paper can be re-used until the entire batch is cooked, then torn off and discarded.

Arrange your biscuits with some space in between them on the baking sheets and bake in the center of your oven for between 8 and 9 minutes. Obviously this is an estimate which I've worked out works well for me, but you'll have to watch your first batch of biscuits and once they start going golden brown, they're done. You don't want to overcook them or they might become too crisp once cooled. Arrange them onto a cooling rack (not a flat surface or the bottoms may get soggy from condensation).

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If you would like to make them super pretty, drizzle some molten chocolate ontop in different directions, add sprinkles like hundreds & thousands or vermicilli, add edible glitter in different colours and you've got biscuits fit to sell at a bakery! Dipping these in your coffee is just SO GOOD!

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Your biscuits can be frozen for up to 1 month so if you're making these as Christmas gifts and want to start early, then you can start baking up to 3 weeks before hand and simply re-bake them for a slight bit to remove any moisture from the freezing process. Obviously if you want to freeze them, the have to be without any sort of embellishments or frosting - you'd have to do that closer to the occasion.

If you enjoyed this and you're keen to try some of my other recipes, I have a brilliant one for home made biscotti which you can jazz up to your liking. These are biscotti bundles I made for Christmas gifts a few years back. The varieties I made were:

Cranberry & Almond
White Chocolate & Macadamia
Milk Chocolate & Pistachio

Cheers,
Your fellow coffee junkie - Ranger Andy :)

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