Whenever I think of Christmas cookies, the basic sugar cookie always comes to mind. The perfect canvas for some serious Christmas artwork. This year I wanted to jazz up some of my sugar cookies. Last year, I came across someone using pink peppercorns in their sugar cookies. That may sound strange, but pink peppercorn aren’t like black peppercorns. Yes they do a bit of a spicy bite, but they also have some fruity, berry like notes in their flavor, a nice addition to a sugar cookie indeed (check out my earlier post on peppercorns). I wanted to give that idea a try, but didn’t want to to full commitment. So I took a couple pinches of peppercorns, smashed them with a meat tenderizer and mixed them into some of my sugar cookie dough. I made about 8-9 cookies worth. They had a nice, spicy bite to them without being overwhelming, and the fruity like taste was a nice addition. So I invite you to give it a try yourself. I don’t have an exact recipe, although below you will find my sugar cookie recipe. If I do end up doing a full batch at some point, I will update this page with the amount of pink peppercorns I used.
Ingredients for my Basic Sugar Cookies
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
6 teaspoons buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 to 4 1/2 all-purpose flour
Cream together the butter and sugar. Then add all the rest of ingredients but the flour. Mix to fully integrate. Then add the flour 1 cup at a time. Depending on the conditions in your kitchen, you will need on average between 4 to 4 1/2 cups to bring this dough together. Once finished, I like to chill the dough for at least half an hour before rolling out the cookies.
Bake at 375 degrees for about 8-10 minutes. I like mine nice and soft, so sometimes I do less than that.
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