Scrumptious Amish Sugar Cookies

Amish Sugar Cookies with Tea

Many years ago my cousin's wife Corrie wrote out her recipe for Amish Sugar Cookies. They were so good and so easy to make that I've not changed a thing.

You can make these delicious cookies in ten easy steps. You're going to need the following ingredients:

1 c. granulated sugar (white sugar)
1 c. powdered sugar (icing sugar is okay)
1 cup margarine
1 cup cooking oil (I use canola)
2 eggs
4 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Get out your Ingredients

Set up your Stand Mixer

I hope you have a fairly new Stand Mixer with the paddle attachment. They make your life so much easier when baking!

Mine is a Cuisinart 7qt mixer. It just went on sale half-price on Amazon.com It has 3 attachments - paddle, whisk and hook. And a splashguard with pouring spout. The spout is great for adding liquids while mixing!

But a word of advice - don't try to put flour from your measuring cup into the pouring spout while the mixer is going....





Step 1: Take your bowl and put in both sugars - the one cup of white sugar and the one cup of powdered or icing sugar.  Next you have to measure out one cup of margarine. Do you know how to do this accurately?

Step 2: The Trick for Measuring Margarine

The Margarine Trick

Here's the trick - first pour the one cup of liquid oil into a 4 cup measuring cup.

Next start scooping in the margarine until the liquid reaches the 2-cup line on the measuring cup.

Simple isn't it? The harder margarine displaces the liquid and when the liquid rises to the 2 cup mark, you know have one cup of each oil.

Creaming the oils and sugars together

Step 3: Start mixing the sugars together. Set your mixer to the lowest speed and gently mix for a few seconds. Then with the mixer still running, start pouring in the oils. Continue creaming sugar and oil together until they are well mixed.

Now you take 2 beaten eggs and add those while the mixer is still running. Let them mix in well, then add the vanilla extract. Mix gently on speed 2 or 3 until everything is blended.

Adding Vanilla

Level off the flour in a dry measure cup

Step 4: Read to measure the flour. There's a trick to measuring dry ingredients such as flour. It's a two-step trick.

First, use a dry measure, not a measuring cup with a spout. Your mother probably told you this and you ignored her.

Well, you shouldn't have, because to measure flour properly you must use a measure that you can overfill and then level off to the top. Trust me on this.

Use a knife and lay it across the dry measure, then sweep it across starting at the edge closest to you and moving the flat blade away from your body. This levels the flour to the top of the measure.

Adding dry ingredients to flour

Step 5: Add the cream of tarter and baking soda to the flour and sift it well. You can cheat if you don't have a flour sifter by using a knife or fork to poke around and stir the mixture up.

You need to make sure your tarter and soda are distributed evenly through the flour before adding it all to the wet mixture.






Step 6: This is the part I like best. You get to dump the dry ingredients into the wet, turn you mixer on and start blending. I start at 1 and gradually increase to 4 or 5. Mix well.

Mixed and ready to drop on baking sheets

Step 7: Drop small balls of dough on ungreased cookie sheets.

 Step 8: Flatten balls of dough with a fork

Step 9: Put cookies in 350' oven for 10-12 minutes. Watch them carefully as they can overcook very easily. Also, don't put too many trays in the oven at once.  Don't put trays on the top rack. In my oven I've learned that I must go down 2 rack positions to position 3 or the cookies are overcooked

Overdone cookies from top rack!

You will get about 5-6 dozen cookies from this recipe and only about 15 cookies on each medium-size tray

Step 10: When cookies are done, remove trays from oven and let sit for about one minute. Then carefully lift cookies with a spatula to cooling rack.

Perfect! This is what the cookies should look like

These cookies freeze well or you can eat them all up in a few days!