C is for...

It has been bothering me for a while, to be sharing a constant stream of sugar cookie concepts, without being able to share a sugar cookie recipe, to go with them. Since I was unable to obtain permission to share my usual recipe of choice here on the blog, I've been working on coming up with one of my own.

After some trial and error, I hit on a recipe I'm happy with, using simple ingredients, in easy to remember quantities, that can be easily halved for smaller snack times, when you need a dozen cookies, or less. I tried it out on the children, and then the Man of the House, to get their approval, and then today, the girls helped me with one final test...

...using it to make some of the cookies we've featured here, in the past, as well as a few new ones, just for fun.

Almost Unschooler's Sugar Cookie Dough

• 1 stick (1/2 cup) salted butter, softened


• 1 cup sugar


• 1 teaspoon vanilla (or substitute various extracts to change the flavor)


• 2 eggs


• 2 cups of flour

Cream together the butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs.

Stir in the flour.

When it becomes difficult to mix with a spoon, use your hands to mix and knead the dough...

...until it becomes smooth, and only slightly sticky (you may need to rinse your hands off, as the flour begins to mix in).

Don't worry if the dough seems a little too sticky, and soft, you can add up to 1/4 cup more flour, a tablespoon at a time, until it stops sticking to your hands, and feels like soft play dough.

If you are planning to add cocoa powder to part of the dough, divide the dough before adding the extra flour, then add the cocoa (2 tablespoons for half a batch) to one half, and the extra flour (then only 2 tablespoons) to the other.

Again, mix it in by hand.

If you add liquid food coloring, add a little more flour too, if the dough seems too sticky to work with.

The dough will feel soft, but if you use a light hand, and roll from the center of the dough out, you should be able to roll it out on wax paper, and cut it with cookie cutters, without using any additional flour (this really keeps the mess down).

Cut, or form the dough into just about anything you can think of, on a greased cookie sheet...

...and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 14 minutes, or until the cookies feel slightly firm to the touch, and are just beginning to brown at the edges.

Fourteen minutes is just enough time to clean the kitchen back up. In fact, since we had two pans of cookies, today, making 28 minutes of baking, there was even time left over to check with our library's website, and pick out a few cookie themed books, to send the older children after.

Because, you know, if you give a homeschooler a cookie...

...they'll want a story to go with it.

It's great to be a homeschooler.