Lofthouse Cookies

My husband loves Lofthouse Cookies - those soft, pillowy, frosted sugar cookies you get in the grocery store, often with seasonal sprinkles.  I kind of hate them.  If I could ban them from my house I probably would, but that would be more than a little tyrannical.  So I figured the next best step would be to make them from scratch and ensure they were actually tasty.

It's not that I hate the idea of Lofthouse cookies, just their common commercial execution.  In reality cake like sugar cookies are amazing.  I love big, soft, snickerdoodles with an unholy passion and the base Lofthouse cookie isn't that different.  What I actually don't like is frosting, particularly mass produced American buttercream frosting that I'm pretty sure is 50% shortening and 50% terrifying chemicals.  I'm more of a glaze gal.  I like a thin layer of flavor and moisture, but I hate a mouthful of goop.  Thus, if I'm going to frost something the frosting better be good and it will be used sparingly.

A pretty thorough internet search led me to choose the Serious Eats recipe for my Lofthouse attempt.  The ingredients were all things I had in my pantry and the measurements were all both volumetric and by weight.  I'm a weigh everything kind of gal and prefer grams to ounces, so I will pretty much always choose a baking recipe that has those weights ready for me. 

I also liked how simple the frosting was: powdered sugar, cream, a little salt, and a little vanilla.  The lack of butter keeps thing frosting from the dreaded gloop feeling I loathe and a little vanilla paste gives it a nice flavor.

I let my butter and egg whites come up to room temperature and then got mixing the dough.

My butter was still a little chilly when I started creaming it, so it took a good five minutes and several scrapes of the bowl to get it fully incorporated and properly aerated.  After that, the dough came together quite easily.  It was very soft and rather sticky - thank goodness for silpats and cookie scoops.

The cookies actually baked a little bit more quickly than stated in the recipe (12 minutes rather than 15).  I always have a pizza stone in the bottom of my oven and it was quite thoroughly heated, so that was probably what moved things along.   I turned the pan halfway through and got a lovely, even bake.

After everything cooled I frosted the cookies and pressed them into a bowl of sprinkles (so much tidier than trying to sprinkle them on and hope they stick).

And there we have it, festive and tasty cookies that are simple enough for the kids (and not so little kids) in your life, but wholesome enough to not make a baking snob cringe.