I once thought it was necessary to be over age 50 to learn how to make these cookies which my Swedish grandmother and mother used to make. But, no, I just needed better instructions and a quick demo, so I rewrote the recipe. My then college son made these cookies for an engineering class presentation and his team won. I think the cookies had something to do with it.
Gram's Sugar Cookies (Grandma Skredsvig)
350 degrees - can be doubled
The wonderful thing about these cookies in addition to the wonderful taste is that they are very thin, almost like paper.
1 1/4 cup butter
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
3 eggs
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp. baking soda
5 1/2 cups flour
sugar for the tops
anise seeds (optional but great)
cinnamon (optional)
Cream butter and sugar. Add vanilla, nutmeg, eggs, sour cream and soda.
Then gradually add the flour. Divide into about 8 to 10 small balls, wrap tightly and chill. (I put them into plastic bags.) You can freeze the frozen bags of dough.
Roll out one ball at a time (leave the others in the fridge) very thinly on a floured pastry cloth (see hints below). Sprinkle sugar alone or with anise seeds or cinnamon sugar on top and roll into very thinly rolled dough. Work as quickly as you can so the dough is still chilled and easier to handle.
Cut cookies with a big, round, serrated cutter, about 4 inches across, and preferably scalloped on the edge. Put on ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 350 until pale brown at edges. First put on the bottom middle rack for 3 minutes; then move to upper middle rack for 3 minutes. Cookies might need a bit longer or a bit less depending on your oven. Cool cookies on rack.
Dough keeps for months tightly wrapped in freezer. Cookies keep for a month in airtight containers (if you can resist that long) or freeze them.
HINTS: Use lots of flour on pastry cloth and on rolling pin cover. Scrape flour off cloth after each batch and discard. Then reflour cloth and rolling pin cover. Whenever a bit of dough sticks somewhere, immediately scrape it off and put flour on the spot.
