Victory!!!! ...with sugar cookies

I'm really good at some things in life. Things like: single-handed-ly eating an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's Half Baked, or watching Biggest Loser while downing raw cookie dough, or devouring a full bag of chips with Tostito's queso dip (ever tried it? so. dang. good.)

Some things in life I'm not so good at. Things like: making sugar cookies. Specifically cutoutable, edible, actually-taste-good, sugar cookies.

The one and only time I attempted such a feat, I was in a crazy inventive mood and decided it was a smart idea to alter a recipe I'd never made before because I like butter so much more than shortening and I did not want to use 10 cups of flour. The result? Super sticky, then super stiff, disgusting, tasteless, non-cutoutable, sugar cookies. I baked a few then threw the rest away. They were only barely edible when completely smothered in very sweet, thick, buttercream frosting. I was clearly not in a good state of mind that day. Because the end product was so horrific, I have been terrified to touch a sugar cookie recipe since.

This weekend, however, that all changed.

Enter: Our Best Bites Sugar Cookie Recipe!

I found this website, Our Best Bites, through several facebook posts and some recommendations by friends during a miserably hot, St Louis summer.
I was rather intrigued for two reasons:

1. they're Mormon, just like me.
2. they blog in a very entertaining way.

I started making a few of the recipes, and now I'm officially hooked. I read every blog post, have the cookbook, and their calendar is hanging on my wall. Sadly, these girls have no idea who I am... though they may know now (Hi Kate! Hi Sara!).

(almost) Every recipe that I have tried from their cookbook has turned out quite amazing, particularly the banana creme pie - heaven in a pie crust. I figured since I'd had so much success, why not try their sugar cookie recipe? Though first I suppose it's a good time to pause and tell you which recipe I did not have success with: Chipotle Chocolate Chili. I completely underestimated the level of spice that is contained in chipotle chilies in adobo sauce until after I had put an entire cans worth of sauce into the chili. Needless to say, there was much attempt at watering down and de-spicing the chili before we could eat it.

Moving on.

Sugar cookies. The biggest problem I had with the dough was the inability to stop eating it. I thought it looked a smidgen dry in my mixer bowl, but one taste confirmed it most definitely was not. I successfully rolled it out between two sheets of wax paper without sticky residue, and had zero problems transferring the cut cookies to a cookie sheet.

(notice the pan on the right has the thicker cookies, those turned out better, I'm just not great at rolling out dough to be evenly thick)

Post baking? A sugar cookie worthy of eating without frosting. (even when I accidentally overcooked a batch)

That has never happened to me, folks. I am a firm believer of dousing sugar cookies in a thick coating of buttercream frosting.  Perhaps that is because most sugar cookies I've tried are terribly bland. These magnificent shapes of buttery goodness could stand completely alone without the extra calories. Once smeared with buttercream, the result was, well, you think of a word better than incredible. And believe it or not, they tasted even better the second day.

All in all, VICTORY!

I vow to never make another sugar cookie recipe ever again.

Thank you, Sara & Kate, for making me feel like I can actually bake.