Most Perfect Christmas Low-Sugar Sugar Cookies
These cookies arose from science. The kind of science that happens when a 4-year-old child begs her mom to make cut-out Christmas sugar cookies because "everyone else is doing it!" and that mom is not a huge fan of refined sugar. Or rather, to be fair, these cookies happened because of love, but there was a lot of science that went into their creation. They are surprisingly analogous to the real deal yet are miraculously low sugar! So, as you may have guessed, we recommend following all the instructions exactly - softened butter, room temperature egg, chilling the dough, and making sure the steps happen in the recommended order, for the perfect Christmas sugar cookies!
Ingredients
In a stand mixer or with an electric hand mixer on low-medium speed (level 4), cream softened butter with date sugar until the mixture is nice and fluffy. Add the room-temperature egg and vanilla extract. Mix on medium-high speed until combined, about 30 seconds - 1 minute.
Sift 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour and baking powder into a separate bowl. Add dry mixture into wet mixture in 3 separate portions, pulsing mixer 2-3 times after incorporating each portion. Use a spatula for the final mix and do not overmix.
Flatten dough onto plastic wrap in a disc until 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch thick. You can halve the dough and make two discs or even three. Chill in the freezer for 30-90 minutes.
When the dough has chilled sufficiently, preheat oven to 325F. Lay the dough onto parchment paper with a bit of flour sprinkled underneath and on top. Roll out to 1/4 inch thick - you can also just use your hands to press down to 1/4 inch thick. You may need to wait for the dough to warm up a bit, but not too much!
Cut with varied cookie cutters when still cold. Place on parchment on a baking sheet, bake for 5 minutes and then rotate the sheet. Bake for another 5 minutes. The cookies should have a very very light golden edge - if they bake beyond this, they'll become more shortbread-like. If they don't have that light golden edge yet, bake further in 1-minute increments. Ours took 11 minutes altogether.
Let them cool on the sheet pan for a few minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack. Frost with your choice of frosting (we use ribbons of Chocolate Date Tahini) or eat them plain - or with a glass of your choice of milk!