Recipe Notes: Chewy Sugar Cookies

25 July 2019

Recipe from The Perfect Cookie, America's Test Kitchen, 2017, page 36; also available online. 

The Perfect Cookie has two recipes for sugar cookies that I have already made and enjoyed: Brown Sugar Cookies, and Chocolate Sugar Cookies. It seemed time to try third sugar cookie recipe for Chewy Sugar Cookies. This would seem to be a recipe for plain ole sugar cookies, as opposed to the two others that feature a flavor in addition to sugar and vanilla. 

These cookies have one ingredient that you don't usually see in cookies, cream cheese, and the dough was mixed by hand. First, the dry ingredients (AP flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) were whisked together and set aside. Sugar and the cream cheese were put into a bowl then whisked with melted butter. (The cream cheese had been cut into pieces, which was a challenge because it is so soft.) In turn, the additional wet ingredients were whisked into the mixture: vegetable oil, egg, milk, and vanilla. The dry ingredients were folded into the wet forming a wet dough. Using a #30 portioning scoop, the balls of dough (about 2 tablespoons each) were made, rolled in sugar, and placed on a backing sheet. They were flattened into 3-inch disks using a metal measuring cup that was sprayed with cooking oil. The cookies were sprinkled with sugar and baked in a 350° oven until the edges just started to brown. Total time to make about 2 dozen cookies was just over one hour.

These are good cookies with a nice taste enhanced by the bit of tang that comes from the cream cheese. When fresh they seemed almost too chewy, as if they were under baked. Perhaps they were, the episode of the TV show where they demonstrated this recipe discussed how critical the baking time could be. As leftovers, stored in the freezer, they were good, too. They were still crispy with a chewy interior and didn't seem like under baked cookies to me. I didn't like them as well as the other two varieties of sugar cookie which were more interesting to me than these which are a little plain.