Strawberry Sugar Cookies

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. I always use an oven thermometer. Ovens can, and usually do, heat at a different temperature than what shows on your oven screen. For the best results in any of your baking, I highly recommend using an oven thermometer. Line your baking sheets with perforated pastry mats or parchment paper. I do not recommend using silicone mats as they tend to promote spreading.

In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, add your cool unsalted butter, sugar, and salt. The temperature of the butter and the fact that you use unsalted butter matter here.

**IF YOU'RE USING REALLY COLD BUTTER** Add your butter and salt to your bowl and mix on low with your paddle attachment JUST until the butter gets broken up a bit. Then add your sugar and continue on with the recipe.

The butter should still be cool (not cold, but definitely not room temperature) otherwise it will cause spreading. Unsalted and salted butter have very different water percentage contents. Using salted butter can and often will cause spreading.

Turn your mixer on the lowest speed available. We don't want to incorporate any air into the dough. Air will cause spreading! We only want to mix this until it starts to incorporate.

Scrape down the bottom and sides of your bowl.

Add the 2 cold eggs and the vanilla. Again, the temperature of the eggs matter. You want to use them cold. Using cold ingredients helps end up with a dough that is ready to go. No one wants to make a dough and then have to wait for hours or days while it just sits in the fridge.

Again, turn your mixer on to the lowest speed and mix just until the eggs and vanilla have incorporated into the butter and sugar. It will still look sort of lumpy or curdled. This is ok. You just don't want any big chunks of butter. Scrape down the bottom and sides of your bowl. If you need to, mix for a few more seconds.

Scrape down the bottom and sides of your bowl.

Add the flour and ground down freeze dried strawberries to your butter, sugar, egg, vanilla mixture.

Once more, turn your mixer on to the lowest setting, and mix until it all comes together. It will start to clean the sides of the bowl and gather onto the paddle.

This is what the dough looks like while it's mixing.

When it's close to coming together.

What it looks like when it's done! Turn the mixer off and touch the dough. If you can leave an imprint with your finger without the dough sticking to it, its ready. I live in a humid area, but the amount of flour in the recipe is perfect 9 1/2 times out of 10.

I use one of my big silicone mats very lightly sprinkled with flour to roll my dough. You can use whatever you like to roll your dough on as parchment paper works great as well! I also use two pieces of 3/8 inch thick wood as my guide to roll my dough between. This will give you perfectly even cookies every time!

Take a little more than 1/3 of your dough, place it onto the very lightly floured silicone mat or parchment paper, and very lightly sprinkle some flour over the dough.

Roll the dough to your desired thickness. I roll at 3/8th of an inch.

Place your cut dough onto your perforated pastry mats or parchment paper covered cookies sheets and bake in your preheated oven for 10-14 minutes depending on the size of your cookies. I never have to bake over 14 minutes, even for my largest cutter (5 1/2 inches). You don't want your cookies to brown.

Place your scraps back into your bowl. Grab a little more than 1/3 of the unused dough. Roll, cut, and throw the scraps back into the bowl. Take all of your scraps and the little bit of unused dough and squeeze it together. You can now use this dough for more cookies. I do it this way to help with not overworking the dough and it always works out great! I do use all of the scraps until there is no remaining dough.

After removing from the oven, let the cookies set on the cookie sheet for 2-4 minutes.

Move them onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

Enjoy your delicious, thick, soft (but sturdy), sugar cookies! Feel free to let your imagination run wild with the flavor possibilities!