4 Levels of Sugar Cookies: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

[Applause] hi i'm emily and i'm a level one chef i'm beth and i'm a level two chef hi i'm penny and i'm a chef at the institute of culinary education i've been a chef for 17 years [Music] so today i'm going to be making you a very fantastic very delicious pre-made sugar cookie i'm going to be dipping these in chocolate and giving them some sprinkles i love to make sugar cookies with my grandkids we put the sugar right on top of the cookie dough before we bake it when the cookie comes out and you bite into it there's a nice crunch the cookies that i'm making today are a delicious creaming method cookie topped with light blue royal icing dried rose petals lavender and 24 karat gold leaf [Music] the first thing we're gonna do is work on our dough and today i have nothing to do because in true level one fashion i'll be using pre-made sugar cookie dough to make the dough we're gonna start by mixing our dry ingredients together the flour baking powder and baking soda i think making cookies from scratch is a lot more fun than getting cookies that you roll out from a sheet so while those guys do whatever they're going to do you want to play tic-tac-toe or something this is a basic creaming method creaming method always starts with butter my salt almond extract luscious vanilla and with sugar what you're looking for to know if something's been fully creamed is that it becomes lighter and fluffier and when we say light we mean both in texture and color right what happens here is that the sugar is beating tunnels into the butter and those tunnels are an opportunity for us to get the next ingredients which in this case is an egg to fit into it well the more evenly that i cream the butter and sugar the better my final results will be in terms of the details of my cookies one thing to note you should definitely um keep this refrigerated the more chilled it is the easier it will be to slice dough complete we've all used the bar but this is so easy that when you see this you won't even bother with it anymore you could just use vanilla but the almond just gives it a little zing there's no whisking here there's no measuring isn't that nice okay i'm not mad at this nice light fluffy practically white still yellow one egg gets added you just want to beat it until it's combined the more that you beat the egg the more air you're adding the more air you're adding the more likely your cookies are going to souffle up this is my all-purpose flour my baking powder my salt i like to put the sugar into the food processor first you can buy super fine sugar but why waste the money throw it in count to 30. you've got superfine sugar everything comes together much better with icy cold butter another 30 seconds wet ingredients this is really easy now all the flour goes in that's it another key with these kinds of cookies you want to find a recipe where there's very little baking powder before i add that i'm going to add my vanilla extract and my fiori de sicilia and this is kind of like an extract the aromas that are trapped in it are very floral when you use that stuff you're going to smell it right away this is the baker's chair so when you cut off the end like that in order to get in you get a little tiny cookie of dough that you can just eat add my flour i like to not make a mess and i can add half of it and let it mix in with the mixer on low speed or stir i can add in the rest of my flour mixture look i'm a chef i'm not going to use the ready-made stuff now isn't this a little bit easier i mean listen homemade cookies are fantastic i'm not gonna say these are gonna beat baths or pennies so now i'm ready to roll my dough some cookie recipes might tell you to chill this dough first i don't like to do that because i find it much easier to roll at this stage so i'm going to put all my dough out into the center of this parchment paper i'm going to top it with another piece of parchment i'm looking for everything to just come together into one big blob so i can separate it into two bowls first thing i do is push the dough down i feel like i have more control this way and when i roll i start from the inside and i work my way out and i never roll over my edges because that will make my dough flatter at the edge than it is at the center so we're looking for about a quarter of an inch this is absolutely the hardest step it doesn't have to be perfect i'm going to transfer this dough to a sheet chai and then into the freezer for about 10 minutes let's go ahead and shape this i'm going to slice it you want to get these about even but not too even i'm really just trying to create a little chaos and confusion to make sure that people don't know that i used a pre-made dough if i were serving this say at an office party or something i'm just going to roll it into a ball and then give it a little smack and bing bang boom you got something that's a little bit more confusing i'm going to try to make some diamonds i've never done this before i'm going to cut the dough on a diagonal straight lines and then i'm going to go the other way they're going to be delicious this design in particular it's a little bit like a donut shape so i'm going to take my smallest cutter and do my absolute best to place it right in the center and cut out a small ring also the great thing about working with chilled dough when i move these cookies around they're going to maintain their shape here we go nice diamonds because this dough was in the refrigerator for an hour and a half the cookies will not spread they'll cook beautifully you don't have to worry about that i'm kind of a little crazy about nice clean edges i'm gonna clean those up a little bit now you bake it like this everyone's gonna know that came from a roll you bake it like this not so sure i wonder what everybody else is doing even though i've done everything that i can to control the spread they're still going to spread a little tiny bit so i want to make sure that they have at least an inch all the way around nothing's worse than cookies hugging here we go the cookies are all ready to be decorated these are ready for my oven if i've worked quickly enough and these are still nice and cold they can go straight into the oven but for extra insurance i'm gonna pop them in the freezer another five minutes or so and just make sure they're really cold these are going to go into the oven at 350 for 11 to 14 minutes we'll just check them around 11 see what happens and i'll be back so there's a ton of different ways that you can decorate a sugar cookie one of the ways i usually do is with royal icing and today we're using it because the other decorations that i'm going to be putting on the cookie will sink into it and set into the cookie i'm going to add my powdered sugar and my confectioners sugar to the bowl my egg whites and my flavor and let it go until we hit something that's approximately stiff peaks all right my cookies are cooled and i'm ready for decorating so the first thing i'm going to do is melt some chocolate so what i have here is a pot filled with water that is coming up to a simmer and i'm just going to put my chocolate in and for this i'm using semi-sweet chocolate chips and i'm just going to add my shortening in there i mean sugar cookies are meant to be simple right how difficult could you possibly make them i'm going to add my color now it's just a small small bit you can always add color but you cannot remove it the next thing that i'm going to do is create flood consistency so what i'm going to do is i'm going to pipe an outline around my cookie and then i'm going to fill it in with more icing so what i'm looking for is an 8 to 10 second flood an 8 to 10 second flood means that it's strong enough to hold the dam and soft enough to smooth over entirely this is my royal icing and it's ready to go to ice my cookies i'm going to just loosen these up break them apart do the old scoop and wiggle i honestly don't know what i'm doing i mean like what's the worst that can happen it'll still be a chocolate covered sugar cookie i'm gonna pipe an outline and i'm gonna spoon it onto my cookie in between the dams that i just piped i'm the boss of my icing we're going for rustic we're going for homemade this is on purpose and not because it's the limit of my capability well those are cookies all right i'm going to sprinkle them and it really doesn't matter if it gets on the paper it gets on the paper the way i feel is the more sugar the better you know they don't look terrible i'm also i'm leaving half the cookie bear because i don't want too much extra stuff i want to also taste the cookie you know and now while my icing is still nice and soft i'm going to start adding my toppings and i'm going to start with my crushed rose petal i might even be a little precious about it all and lay them on specifically where i want them to be it's not that i couldn't do flower petals it's simply that i wouldn't and this is dried lavender add a little bit of that as well we have some edible glitter and we'll just place this where we want to it'll create a little bit more shine we're going to use some silver powder which is actually edible silver leaf and our little gold sugar pearls what you want to do with these cookies is have fun i love to use sanding sugar it comes in lots of different colors i also make it with white sugar white sugar is great too and it's pretty how can you go wrong and on this one i'm going to add some gold leaves gold leaf is actual 24 karat gold pounded and rolled and pounded and rolled and pounded and rolled until it becomes incredibly thin and you can pick it up with a brush tap it into the wet icing this is the high-end crazy over-the-top real gold version i have another version for you these are the cookies that were iced yesterday they've dried completely overnight i'm going to add some brush strokes with gold and this is a gold luster powder i'm going to add a little bit to this bowl first and then i'm going to use vodka as my solvent pour a little into the cap because if i pour straight into it i'm going to add too much and i just need enough to create a paint like consistency painting gold powder with a little bit of alcohol is a great way to add some gorgeous gold luster without the hassle of the gold leaf so right now i'm just sort of decorating my chocolate side of my cookie with sprinkles to give it that little extra bit of pizzazz all right now that these are all decorated i'm just going to let the chocolate set and then we'll plate them up give them a taste now that my cookies are all decorated i'm going to put them in a 300 degree fahrenheit oven 18 to 20 minutes till they're lightly brown on the bottom off to make the cookies my cookies are ready and i'm gonna choose my prettiest ones to plate up the chocolate is nice and glossy the sprinkles are joyful colorful 20 minutes in a 300 degree oven and they're perfect i love the multicolored ones i could just put them on the plate by themselves but why would i want to do that i can use the sanding sugar to create depth and height variations so i'm going to start with my painted ones and i'm going to bury them into my sugar and i can use a little more to raise them up and these are my sugar cookies and these are my colorful sugar cookies and these are my rose petal lavender and 24 karat gold leaf sugar cookies [Music] i'm excited to try them mm-hmm the middle chewy soft the outer edge crispy crunchy i can taste that it's pre-made dough but like do i care no wonderful butter taste i love these cookies looks great good to give as a gift good to have in your cookie jar all the time that is not your average sugar cookie that is so flavorful it's crunchy that is a really incredible sugar cookie i did good sugar cookies are always a beautiful and portable little treat no matter how simple or complex you make them let's see how each of our three creative chefs made theirs emily used store-bought cookie dough that she molded to give the appearance of homemade cookie dough you don't even have to measure anything it contains sugar flour palm and vegetable oil and chemical flavorings it's leavened with sodium aluminum phosphate which is a commercial type of baking powder this baking powder is different from the types you use at home because it contains aluminum which helps to keep it stable while it's moist in the unopened package it's safe to eat raw because the processor uses a small amount of raw but pasteurized eggs and heat treats the flour that's included which is a double defense against any pathogenic or disease-causing microorganisms that may be in the dough beth mixed her ingredients in a food processor the blade slices through the ingredients and worked very quickly she processed the sugar to make it ultra fine so it dissolves faster and is distributed throughout the dough evenly she added her butter then wet ingredients and finally her dry ingredients all at once and only pulsed them until they came together minimizing gluten formation for a tender sugar cookie penny mixed her cookie dough in a standing mixer with a paddle attachment and used the creaming method for her cookies she beat the sugar and butter first which aerates her mixture then added her eggs and flavorings then gradually added her dry ingredients being careful to scrape down the dough in the bowl and not to over mix over-mixing encourages gluten development which gives a firmer crumb structure to cookies something we don't want here emily decorated her cookies with melted chocolate chips and shortening the shortening keeps the chocolate from completely hardening when cooled beth used sanding sugar which is colored and has a large coarse crystal size that prevents it from dissolving it's used almost exclusively for decorating and adds a bit of a crunch to beth's cookies penny made beautiful level 3 cookies with royal icing and gold leaf royal icing is a type of uncooked decorator's icing made from egg whites and confectioners sugar it's flat white and stiff almost brittle when it dries it takes coloring very well and can be made into flowers and petals and other pretty decorations she also added edible gold leaf gold is a malleable heavy metal but is considered to be biologically inert in very small quantities that means it passes through your digestive tract without being metabolized it certainly adds a glamorous touch to penny's cookies cookies can be a decadent seasonal dessert or a delectable treat during any time throughout the year next time you're baking cookies we hope you'll take some of these tips from our three inventive chefs

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 472,063

Keywords: 4 levels, 4 levels sugar cookies, best sugar cookies, christmas cookies, cookie, cookie decorating, cookie hacks, cookie recipe for beginners, cookies art, cookies art decorating, cookies decorating, cookies for decorating, easy cookie recipe, easy sugar cookies, epi, epicurious, epicurious sugar cookies, expert sugar cookies, holiday cookies, how to decorate sugar cookies, make sugar cookies, simple sugar cookies, sugar cookie, sugar cookie recipes, sugar cookies

Id: EYNHgqTKQJA

Length: 15min 51sec (951 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 01 2021