There’s something that’s always bothered me about homemade cookies: they taste… homemade. They are missing that “something special” that cookies from the bakery have. If I’m going to go through all the trouble of baking cookies, I want them to taste as good as the bakery makes them. It ought to be possible — I mean I’m starting from scratch with just a pile of ingredients just like a bakery would. Yet somehow homemade cookie recipes always lack that lightness and yumminess that comes from a good bakery.
A few years ago, I was in Bruce’s Bakery in Great Neck (reviews) and they had the most wonderful thing — an actual book with the recipes of how THEY made things. Aha! Now it all makes sense! They’re using the same ingredients, but not always in the same ways — and that makes all the difference.
In this recipe for Homemade Sugar Cookies, they use powdered sugar (confectioners’ sugar, or as I have always called it “Pow! Dead!” sugar) to make the cookie have a light texture and then sprinkle regular sugar on top to give it bright crunchy sparkles. Read on for the recipe and photos!