These are the only cookies I know how to make by heart. I learned the basic recipe from my mom, who is a master at making amazing things with butter and sugar. You really only need to remember the proportions of the three main ingredients – two parts flour, one part sugar, and one part butter. Add some vanilla, some chocolate chips or nuts or both (or really anything you want) and that’s it. These cookies take so little effort that I’m willing to make them even at my laziest after-work, couch-lounging, binge-watching-30-Rock-on-Netflix moments. So yes, having this recipe in your brain, ready to pull out at any time, can be kind of bad. But also so good.
the recipe
Makes about 20 tiny cookies.
Prep time: 8 minutes
Cooking time: 12 minutes
ingredients
- 1 cup of flour
- 1/2 cup of sugar (brown sugar if you want them a little chewier, white sugar if you want them a little crispier)
- 1/2 cup (or 1 stick) of butter, softened
- 1 tsp vanilla extract (or add more or less to taste)
- 1/3 cup of mix-ins like chopped nuts or chocolate chips
instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a mixing bowl, cream together butter, sugar, and vanilla extract.
- Add the flour and mix until everything is combined.
- Now, throw in whatever mix-ins you feel like. For the cookies pictured in this post, I did half the batch with chopped walnuts and half with chocolate chips.
- Roll cookies into small balls, maybe about 1 inch or so in diameter and lay them on an ungreased cookie sheet.
- Bake for 12 minutes, or until you see them slightly golden on the edges.
Variation: If you decide to do a version of the cookies with just chopped nuts, try rolling them in powdered sugar after they cool. What you get will remind you of Mexican Wedding Cookies (aka Russian Tea Cakes or Snow Balls). This is actually my favorite version of these cookies. Just beware: if you’re like me, after your first bite, the powdered sugar will be everywhere.
