Super Soft Thumbprint Butter Cookies

OH. EM. GEE. 

YA GUYS. These cookies. They are to die for. Not only are they super soft and just *melt* in your mouth, they are super, duper, easy to make. Like I'm talking ONLY 5 ingredients! It's so easy and has ingredients that any basic pantry would have. This may lead you to think "well it can't be so good if it's so basic". But you would be wrong, friend. Very wrong. 

I like to make a batch of these to take to work around the holidays and they are always a great hit. Its a very simple cookie and appeals to most palettes, and you would be hard pressed to find someone who 'hates' soft melt in your mouth butter cookies. In fact they were so good my health conscious boss even asked for seconds!

These cookies are thrown together real quick but make a really nice, smooth, easy to work with dough. I used my kitchen aid mixer, but you can of course use a regular mixer. Its just a basic 'mix your butter with sugar, beat, then add the rest' kind of recipe. The result is a super delicious butter cookie that melts in your mouth. They are great both warm and cooled. They aren't too sweet so its a great 'base' cookie - the cookie itself is soft and melt-y, but you can add other treats to make it sweet such as jam, chocolate, and icing sugar.

Its a great Christmas cookie recipe, but honestly I would have them all year round. Its a great base so I plan on trying different recipes in the next little while to see how they come along. So if you are looking for a great quick and easy Christmas cookie look no further than these soft butter cookies. Ok. I think I might have accidentally over hyped these cookies, thus causing extremely high expectations that no cookie could live up to. Forget what I said. They are just 'meh' cookies. 'Meh' cookies that I highly suggest you make ;)

Soft Thumbprint Butter Cookies

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup softened salted butter (BE SURE to use butter - no margarine here please!)
• ½ cup icing sugar, plus a little more for dusting the cookies at the end
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 2 cups flour
• ½ cup jam (any flavour but I usually use Strawberry or Raspberry)

1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Be sure to do this because unlike other cookies made with a high butter base these cookies stick to the pan!

2. In a bowl (or your kitchen aid mixer with the paddle attachment), beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and salt. Switch to low and gently mix in flour, just until combined - you don't want to over mix!

3. Roll balls of dough into 1-inch balls (about 1 tablespoon each). Place dough balls on parchment lined baking sheets. Press down the center of each ball with your thumb (they are thumbprint cookies after all!). I have also used the back side of my teaspoon measuring spoon before too!

4. Fill centers with a teaspoonful of the jam of your choice. Bake 12-15 minutes, making sure to not over bake. The baking of these cookies is a bit special - when they are ready they wont look ready because they wont get golden brown on the tops. That's ok. We don't want them to! When it gets golden on the top it means its over baked and will result in a dry cookie. Instead, to check if the cookie are ready carefully check the undersides to see if they are golden. If the cookie lifts (it wont if its not baked) and is golden underneath you are good to go! Let them cool on the baking sheet, then transfer to cooling rack.

5. When cookies are completely cooled (otherwise it will melt into the cookies), dust with icing sugar. Cookies can be kept in a container for a few days (though they probably wont last that long!)

If you try the other flavours let me know how they turned out :)

The Classic Original Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

So the other day I headed in to the kitchen with a lot of excitement on what I should make. My Tiramisu recipe? Soft buttery shortbread cookies? Lemon squares? ginger molasses  bars? options! options! As I pondered my options out loud to my brother he said "Well, those are all great and all, but can't you make something normal for once?" I thought this was funny as this is the same guy who inhales everything I bake, and then asked for thirds, fourths, and tenths. This was the first time I hear any such complaint or suggestion from him. But as I thought about it, I realized it had been quite a while since I went "classic". I asked him what exactly he meant by "something normal" and he immediately retorted "CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES!" (clearly he had been holding on to this!)

"Ok," I said "What kind of chocolate chip cookies? Soft and chewy? Thin and crispy? OOOH how about CAKEY cookies those are awesome! And maybe we can add walnuts?" His reply: "NO! I said NORMAL! Just a NORMAL chocolate chip cookie. Nothing crazy fancy with weird ingredients. I JUST want a cookie!"

Well alright then.

 
Normal and nothing crazy? Well that means we need to go with a classic chocolate chip cookie recipe! And what better than the ORIGINAL, must classical cookie you could get - the first every chocolate chip cookie recipe! There are various stories as to what really happened and how the actual cookie was invented, with some saying it was a brilliant accident, to others claiming it was created on purpose. One things for sure, however, and that is that chocolate chip cookies were invented by Ruth Graves Wakefield in the 1930s. (lets all take a minute and say “Glory be the thee Mrs. Wakefield!”) One story goes that Mrs. Wakefield  was in the kitchen of the Toll House Inn (an Inn she owned with her husband) and was planning on make a batch of her Chocolate Butter Drop Do cookies to serve to her guests. But as she was in the middle of baking the recipe, Ruth discovered she was out of baker’s chocolate! Ruth then tried to save the batch by adding some chopped up Nestlé chocolate that had been given to her by Andrew Nestlé of the Nestlé Company. (Lets take a moment and appreciate how awesome it is that Mrs. Wakefield personally knew a family member of the Nestle corporation. I would totally be name dropping up in the blogosphere if it were me! …which come to think of it is probably why its not me…) Anyways, Ruth had expected the chocolate she added to the batter to melt and disperse through the cookie dough, but of course it did not! And thus the invention of the brilliant chocolate chip cookie!

Oh, but you know what this means don’t you? My brother was being all up in my face about stopping my experimentations, and going classic…. Where in reality, the chocolate chip cookie was discovered due to someone’s creative experimentation! :)

Hope you enjoy them!

Classic Nestle Chocolate Chip Cookies

 * 2 1/4 cups  all-purpose flour

* 1 teaspoon  baking soda

* 1 teaspoon  salt

* 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

* 3/4 cup  granulated sugar

* 3/4 cup  packed brown sugar

* 1 teaspoon  vanilla extract

* 2  large eggs

* 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels

* 1 cup  chopped nuts (I didn’t add these for obvious brother-hates-nuts reasons)

Instructions : I thought since this is an original recipe, you should check out the official nestle website for the instructions if you would like to make them :) INSTRUCTIONS HERE

This provides the perfect classic, original type of chocolate cookie, because it was! Enjoy and let me know what you think :)


**TIP: I find if you microwave the cookies for 10 seconds before eating makes them SO amazing and melty in your mouthy :) 
 

And lookie here! My first ever youtube video! Showing you step by step how its done :)

Super Soft Gingerbread Men Cookies

Hello Lovelies!

I was originally hoping to get this post out before Christmas, but since I was making them fresh for Christmas it kind of ended up not happening for logistical reasons. But oh well. Better late than never right? Especially in the case of these yummy soft gingerbread cookies ! 

So backing up a little, I thought I should provide a wee bit of background: Despite not actually celebrating Christmas, every year I try to get a little something for my coworkers. Nothing crazy but just a little something to spread the merriness of the season. It does sometimes confuse people that on one hand I don’t celebrate Christmas, yet on the other hand I do the whole gift thing. My response is simple: Tis the Season! I love that it can brighten up people’s day, and, I mean, really, no one is complaining right? :)

But my problem this year is I joined a new team at work, and theres about 12 people on it. That made the logistics of buying gifts a bit more complicated. But not wanting to do nothing I decided it would be the perfect opportunity to show off some of my baking skills at work. I decided to make something Christmas-ey, and then it hit me - Gingerbread cookies! 

Now I don’t know about you, but my ideal gingerbread cookie recipe consists of a soft chewy cookie filled with flavour. I have always hated those hard, crispy, break your tooth gingerbread men that were the only option at your local grocery store. This, my friends, is not that! 

These soft gingerbread cookies are, well, very soft. Not too soft, in the “oh no! my cookie just crumbled in my hand cause it was too soft” sort of way. In fact the texture on the outside is pretty stiff and solid. But when you take a bite in to it, its very soft and not tooth break-ey. The great thing about these cookies are that they stay soft even a few days later (though you probably won’t have very many left!). 

Decorating these soft gingerbread man? gingerbread men ? gingerbread cookies? whatever you wanna call them, is also super fun. Get some icing and candies and go to town. Since this was the first time I was going through the bother to decorate (this was a gift people, a messy piled on smear of icing wasn’t going to work here) I decided to make each of the cookies different which was lots of fun! I then finished it up by wrapping them up in some creepy looking but STILL FESTIVE baggies, and topping it off with ribbons. This was clearly a classy affair. 

soft ginger bread cookie man decorating idea | www.livingthelovely.com

One of my favourite cookie design of all the ones I made :)

soft gingerbread men cookie recipe design ideas

more designs! Each one was unique!

gingerbread cookie packaging

GAH! Creep right? look at its face its all melty. Its like he's possessed...one face has round white eyes and features and the other has red semi circles. Its like a demon child or something. Am I just letting this baggie disturb me a little too much? haha

Gingerbread man cookie packaging with ribbon for christmas gifts! | www.livingthelovely.com

TADA! Heres how they looked like in the end. I promise they were good looking - these were taken with my phone at 2 am! :p

I would highly recommend them and they were a hit in the office, so if you are looking for a SOFT gingerbread man cookie recipe, this is the one people!

Soft Gingerbread Men Cookies

* 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter (softened at room temp)

* 1 cup brown sugar 

* 2 large eggs

* 1 cup molasses 

* 1 tsp baking soda

* 3/4 tsp salt

* 1 tsp. cinnamon

* 1/2 tsp  ground cloves

* 2 tsp ground ginger

* 5 cups flour

1. Mix your softened butter with brown sugar with a pair of beater or your kitchen aid mixer. Beat until its smooth.

2. Then add your 2 eggs to the mixture and mix some more until fully incorporated. Add the molasses and mix. Just a note here that I use Blackstrap which makes a darker cookie but you can do the normal kind too. I just prefer the richer taste of the Blackstrap.

3. In a separate bowl mix all of the dry ingredients together: baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and flour.

4. Add the dry ingredients to your wet mixture and mix until you get your dough! yay you’re done! 

6. Before you can roll out your dough you need to refrigerate it for a few hours. I would recommend make a few disc shapes with it, and then wrapping it in plastic wrap, before putting in the fridge. This just makes for easy rolling later!

7. Once you're ready to make cookies, pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.

8. Once your dough is chilled roll it out on to a lightly floured surface and give it a few good kneads - this will make the dough work a lot better. Just be sure to not incorporate TOO MUCH flour. Then you just roll it out and cut out your cookies! For softer chewier cookies you want to go for 1/4-1/3 inch dough. The thicker the rolled out dough the softer the cookie.

9. On a parchment lined baking sheet, bake your cookies in your pre-heated oven for about 10 minutes. However, depending on how hot your oven runs, you might want to do 8. Our new oven made the cookies a bit dark at 10 minutes so use your discretion. Also, a hint, these cookies can be hard to figure out if they are cooked or not because they are so dark as it is. However, I do feel the cookies lighten up when they are done baking so there is that (which is weird when you think about it…cookie gets darker when they bake not lighter right?). I try to go on the side of slightly under cooked than slightly overcooked as it makes a softer cookie. 

TIP* I refrigerated some of the dough (since when I was making them I was up till 2 am despite having work the next day ( #dedication ), and then about a week later I decided to make the cookies again and to my surprise they came out tasting EXACTLY the same! Awesome right? Just one thing I noticed is the cookies had a fewcracks on them that they didn’t have when I made them fresh. They weren’t a big deal, but I thought I should share. Also, it may just have been because I was too lazy to bother kneading the dough a few times again before rolling it out. SO do that if you choose to refrigerate the dough. And let this lazy girl know if it works out? ;)

P.S. Heres what happens when you are down to your last few cookies to decorate, you are running low on decorating ideas, and its 2 AM: