If you’ve followed me for very long, you know the best recipes come from the Shellie side of this duo, but one rainy day in September it seemed like a good day to bake. 

I had gotten out an old cookbook my sister had compiled of family recipes from probably forty years ago. It was more of a reminiscing experience, than a cooking one, but one recipe caught my eye. It was for a soft sugar cookie. Hummm….I do love a soft sugar cookie. Wouldn’t it be fun to make a recipe my Aunt Gladys used to make in her log cabin a hundred years? I asked myself, then I answered myself with, Yes, it would. 

A few minutes after concluding I should make the cookies, my granddaughter, Bella, called to ask me a question. She’s the sweetest and always asked what I’m doing so I spilled the beans on the cookie plan. Being the trooper that she is, she said she wanted to help and would come over that afternoon to make them. My cookie idea just turned into the BEST. DAY. EVER. Who doesn’t love cookie baking with a granddaughter?

I gathered all the ingredients which, even a novice like me could tell, were all the standard cookie-making elements. Flour, sugar, butter, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, eggs, sour cream. Whoa! Wait! Sour cream. This recipe just got more intriguing. My favorite biscuit recipe (from Kay Robertson) includes sour cream and it’s over the top, so this has GOT to be an amazing sugar cookie.

The afternoon came and so did Bella and we got started. The original provider of this recipe, my Aunt Dot, suggested doubling the recipe. Our family is so big we often double recipes and that particular night I was hosting a group of young men at the house for a bible study. Doubling would be a good idea. Or so I thought.

After mixing the 3 cups of sugar, 2 cups of butter and 4 eggs, we decide the bowl we picked would not hold the 8 cups of flour required for the now doubled-recipe sugar cookie. Three tries later and we finally had a bowl big enough. Bella worked on the butter/sugar combo while I tackled the dry ingredients, then we began the task of mixing the two together. Okay, 8 cups of flour is a lot! Poor Bella had mixing duty and she literally had to get up on the counter to hang on to the mixer. (It’s just a small hand held mixer because, remember, I don’t bake often enough to warrant the biggie.)

Eventually, we got the mixture looking like cookie dough, covered it and put it in the frig to chill. We both had other things to do so we agreed to meet back in two hours to finish the job. 

Two hours was perfect. The dough was chilled and ready to plop down on a floured surface. Again, we underestimated our blob of cookie dough and had to divide it into four portions to roll it out. Bella put her muscles to work rolling the dough out and then we used biscuit cutters to make our cookies. It was at that point we realized we had made a lot of cookies. Lol. With both ovens going, we made over 100 cookies. Plenty for my group of young men that night. In fact, there are still around 40 left in a bag on my kitchen counter. 

So, were they good, you asked? Well, I think 100 years ago, when sugar and butter was scared, they were probably delicious. In 2020, they seemed a little dry and plain. But, did I like them? For me, they were great. I love a simple cookie. For Bella, they were dry and plain. So, we came up with a plan for the group of young men coming to my house. We ran up to the store, bought some strawberries and homemade whipped cream and turned them into little strawberry shortcake cookies. YUMMY! There were no complaints from the bible study group!

So, here’s the recipe if you would like to try. You probably don’t need to double it. If you do, go ahead and find your biggest bowl. You’ll need it. 

Of course, the best ingredient isn’t in the recipe. That would be a grandkid to spend the afternoon making cookies with you. That’s the best!

Grandmother (Aunt Gladys) Durham’s Soft Sugar Cookies 

4 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

¾ tsp. salt

1 cup butter or ½ cup margarine and ½ cup shortening

1 ½ cup sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

2 eggs

¾ cup sour cream 

Directions:

1. Grease baking sheet slightly. Pre-heat oven to 450.
2. Mix all dry ingredients together in a bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, cream butter or combination of shortening and butter until smooth.
4. Stir in vanilla, then beat with eggs until fluffy.
5. Add flour mixture and sour cream, alternating and mixing until smooth.
6. Cover bowl and chill in the refrigerator 2-3 hours to firm the dough. 
7. Remove 1/3 of dough at a time and roll out on a lightly floured pastry cloth or mat.
8. Cut out cookies using a regular biscuit cutter or fancy cutters, if preferred. 
9. Place on a baking sheet and bake at 450 for 7-9 minutes. 
10. Cool and store in air-tight jar or container.