Basic Cookie Dough

 I came across a basic vanilla cookie dough recipe on Baking911.com. There are ways to tint the cookie dough too while making it. It is pretty versatile and with some imagination, you can make any variety of cookies with the same basic dough. This dough can be refrigerated for 2-4 days and can be frozen for up to 2 months.


Plain vanilla cookie dough:
Ingredients:
2 cups APF
2/3 cup sugar (castor)
14 tbsp cold unsalted butter (3/4 cup)


1 Egg Yolk
1 - 1.5 tbsp cream or whole milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt

Method:
1. Mix the flour and sugar well, with a whisk or sift together 2-3 times to make it uniform
2. Cut the unsalted butter directly into the flour-sugar mix.The butter should be cold. After measuring, re-chill the butter if necessary.












3. Make a crumbly mix of butter sugar and flour.

4. In another bowl, beat the Egg yolk, cream, vanilla extract and salt.













5. Add the egg mixture to the butter mixture and make a smooth dough.
6. Wrap the dough and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.










This is just the procedure for making the dough.

If you want to add nuts or fruits, you could do it after step 5.

If you want to tint the dough, you should do the following instead of step 4.
4 a. (tinting dough). In a small bowl, add the color to the cream. Mix well until the color is uniform.
4. b.(tinting dough). In another small bowl, beat the egg yolk, vanilla extract and salt. Add the colored mixture in and mix until uniform.

After this step continue with step 5.














By this time the butter had softened and the dough was too soft to handle. I should have re-chilled the butter while I worked with the white dough. It is important that the butter is very cold.

To bake the cookie:
7. Unwrap the cold dough and on a lightly floured surface roll it into 1/4 inch thick and cut out various shapes using a cookie cutter.
8. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degree C, for 8-10 minutes, until lightly browned.

I used the above dough to make a checkerboard pattern cookie. You can refer to a step-by-step procedure to make the checkerboard patter in this post.
I used some left over red dough and white dough to make basic cookies.

The texture of these cookies is very smooth. They have that chewy and melt in the mouth texture. I felt the sugar could be increased a little bit, by 4 tablespoons maybe.