Measurements [American]
- 225 g butter, softened
- 200 g sugar
- 4 large egg yolks
- Either:
- 60 mL sour cream
- 1 egg
- 450 g cake flour
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
Decorating
- 1 egg, beaten with a little water
- colored sugars
- sprinkles
- dragees
- non-pareils
Cream the butter until very light. Add sugar; cream butter and sugar until combined. Scrape the bowl. Add egg yolks and sour cream and beat until combined. Scrape the bowl.
Slowly add flour and baking powder (even with the pouring shield on my mixer, I still get flour all over the table if I add too quickly). Mix on low speed until dough is uniform, scrape one last time, and mix in that last big to flour. The dough will be very sticky and unworkable. Refrigerate at least two hours until cold.
After the dough has chilled, preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Line three or four baking sheets with parchment paper.
Divide the chilled dough into three pieces. Roll out one piece of dough to about 1.0-cm thick. Refrigerate the remaining dough. Cut cookies and place onto the lined cookie sheet. Brush with beaten egg; add decorations as desired. Bake 15 minutes until golden; watch carefully!
Note: If you use jumbo eggs or are baking in a hot, humid (i.e. Florida) kitchen, reduce yolks to 3.
Note: A stand mixer works best. Most hand mixers don't have the power to work with this much cookie dough. If using a hand mixer, add the last bit of flour by hand.
Unlike traditional sugar cookies, these are very soft (because of the cake flour and egg yolks) with a little tang from the sour cream. Decorate them as much or as little as you want. Traditional shapes in my childhood included roosters, four-leaf clovers and fish.
The leftover egg whites are used in my favorite meringue cookies, like macaroons, busserl, and haselnussbrtchen
.