Change up your glaze on butter basics

One of the easiest holiday cookies for me is the basic butter drop cookie. The recipe uses ingredients I generally have in my pantry, is easy to double and I can bake multiple cookie trays at once in my convection oven.

Plus, they are a rich treat and go well with coffee.

I actually decided to make basic butter cookies for another reason this time: I had extra egg yolks. Making a meringue cookie means surplus egg yolks and I hate to just toss them. The butter cookies were the perfect solution to my extra egg yolks – plus I found out they are my dear friend Mike’s favorite cookies.

Before I got too excited about making the butter cookies, I did a quick ingredient check. This is always wise. I can tell you from multiple experiences that it is super frustrating to be ready to bake and realize you are out of something. Like vanilla. Like confectioner’s sugar. Like baking soda. See I have a lot of personal experience with this.

Also, if you are a seasonal baker, check your expirations and your ingredient freshness. I tossed a bag of wheat flour and both Maria and I tossed some confectioner’s sugar. You don’t want to ruin an amazing batch of butter cookies with stale ingredients.

One of my favorite butter cookie recipes comes from the Land O’Lakes company. The Old-Fashioned Butter Cookie recipe uses egg yolks and a few basic ingredients. They add a pecan to each cookie, which makes them a little Pecan Sandie like but I decided to glaze them instead. For one I didn’t have any pecans in the pantry, and for two I love glaze.

Maria and I mix up glaze for cookies and cakes on the regular. She makes what we call an amazing “lush glaze,” which as you may have guessed is made with liquor. I have been missing my father and his favorite flavor was lemon, so I decided to use a lemon glaze. Maria also suggested adding lemon zest to the glaze for those who like a zing of flavor.

Glaze is easy to make without actually measuring the ingredients so I called to ask Maria if she had a recipe, and she said she also just mixes in the ingredients until she finds the right balance. We’ve been making glaze a long, long time.

For this blog, I measured the confectioner’s sugar, half and half and fresh lemon juice as I went so I could give you an idea of how much of each of the three ingredients I used. For these cookies, I like my glaze thin. I mixed it with a whisk and brushed it on using a silicone pastry brush after the cookies had cooled off.

They have gotten great reviews.

OLD-FASHIONED BUTTER COOKIES

https://www.landolakes.com/recipe/19318/old-fashioned-butter-cookies/

1 cup butter, softened (I did this in the microwave because I am impatient)

¾ cup granulated sugar

2 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat butter, sugar, egg yolks and vanilla with electric mixer on medium speed until well mixed, scraping the bowl often.

Add flour and salt; beat at low speed until well mixed, scraping the bowl often.

Shape dough into 1-inch balls.

Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. (I used Silpat baking mats and parchment paper.)

Flatten the balls to about ¼-inch thickness with bottom of glass dipped in sugar.

Bake 10-12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet.

Remove cookies to rack to cook.

Brush with glaze once cookies are cool.

LEMON GLAZE

¾ cup confectioner’s sugar

2 tablespoons whole milk (or half and half)

juice of half a lemon (about 1 overflowing tablespoon)

Whisk milk into powdered sugar. Whisk in lemon juice. Adjust thickness by adding small amounts of powdered sugar. Adjust lemon by adding more to taste.

Brush on cookies or pour over cakes. (Make sure to thicken the glaze for use on cakes and breads.)

If you have a recipe that’s easy to make and a friend-favorite, we’d love to hear from you. DM us on Instagram @itswhateverblog, email us at itswhateverblog@outlook.com, or post to our Facebook page at http://bit.ly/amyandmariaFB.

Happy baking,

Amy