These delicious cookies simplify and reverse the process of cutting out shapes. Instead of rolling them out, you cut the shapes as soon as the pans come out of the oven. NOTE: cutting them out must be done IMMEDIATELY after they are baked.
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Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup melted butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup cooking oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups rice flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp salt
Optional: colored sugar or sprinkles
Cooking items you’ll need:
Mixing bowl, wire whisk, cookie sheets / sheet pans, parchment paper, wooden spoon, knife or spatula to spread dough, metal cookie cutters or pizza roller or knife to cut shapes
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt stick of butter. If you have an oven-proof bowl, you can melt the butter in the oven while it is preheating. Be careful not to burn the butter – or yourself removing it from the oven.
Once the butter is very soft or fully melted, add it to the cup of sugar in a mixing bowl and whisk until it’s smooth. If the butter is very hot, let this mixture sit for a few minutes to cool slightly. If it’s too hot, you will cook the eggs when you add them and end up with disgusting bits of cooked eggwhite in your dough. Ugh.
Once the butter-sugar mixture has cooled slightly, add the eggs and whisk until they are fully incorporated. Then add the oil and vanilla, gently whisking again.
In a separate mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt. Stir this around a little so that there are no lumps and it’s thoroughly combined. Then add it to the butter-sugar-egg mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until it forms a dough.
Set the dough aside and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Then divide the dough evenly in two, placing half on each lined baking sheet. Use a butter knife, spatula, or your hands to spread the dough over the baking sheets, going within a half inch of the outer edges if possible. The dough doesn’t have to be spread perfectly evenly, but try not to leave spots with either no dough at all or thick lumps. I have had success spreading this with my fingers and then smoothing it out with a butter knife.
If you are going to use sprinkles or colored sugar, now’s the time. I’ve found that I get more even coverage by pouring a little colored sugar into a small bowl and using my fingers to sprinkle it rather than shaking it out of the container it comes in.
Bake each sheet for 11-14 minutes in a 350 degree oven. The edges should be browning when it is ready. The more they brown, the quicker they will crisp.
IMPORTANT!!! Once you remove these cookies from the oven, you only have about five minutes to get them cut out before they begin to cool and get crispy. If you don’t cut the shapes right away, they will crumble instead of giving you clean edges.
Tips for Cutting the Shapes:
If I am making these just because I want sugar cookies, I quickly cut them into rectangles or diamonds using a rolling pizza cutter. But when I want cute shapes, I use metal cookie cutters. The trick here is to plan ahead to cut the shapes as close together as possible so that you end up with less space between the cookies and more finished shapes. On the other hand, I feel like the “scraps” between the cookies don’t count when you’re eating them. (Totally untrue – but it’s what I tell myself.)
Once you have an entire pan cut into shapes, you can start to gently separate them from each other. The tip of a knife can be helpful to pry them apart. Let them cool, either on the sheet they were baked on or by gently placing them on a rack.
Store the cooled cookies in an airtight container either in the fridge or the freezer. If you have unshaped edges left, they are delicious crumbled up and saved for an ice cream topping.
Parchment Paper Pre-Cut Sheets