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By Sarah Condley

Columnist

It was Tuesday night, and I’d had a busy day. But it was time to come up with some type of snack to prepare for our church youth group meeting that would take place the next day.

I wanted to make cookies and began looking through a stack of recipes I’ve collected. I spotted a recipe I’ve wanted to try for a while called Butter Meltaways, and after reading the recipe, I placed it to the side. I continued my search through my stack and found a recipe for Amish Sugar Cookies.

After reading through the recipe, I thought it sounded just like the Butter Meltaways recipe. So I compared the two and you know what, they were the same, except the Butter Meltaways used half the ingredient amounts than the Amish Sugar Cookies, and the baking temperature and baking time were slightly different. Since the Amish Sugar Cookie recipe made more, that’s the one I went with. Both recipes had been torn from magazines, but the magazine’s name wasn’t on either page, so I can’t give credit where credit is due for the recipes.

I turned on the oven to preheat and got two large cookie sheet pans out of the cabinet. Now I was ready to get started.

Knowing I was going to make some kind of cookies earlier in the day, I’d set a stick of butter out to soften. All I had to do was put the butter in a large bowl with the oil and sugars and combine with my mixer; then add the eggs and beat until well blended.

Next, after combing the flour, baking soda and cream of tartar in a smaller bowl, I poured the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and turned on the mixer again. In no time, the cookie dough came together.

Another difference between the two recipes I didn’t mention earlier was that the Meltaways were to chill in the refrigerator for several hours. Well, I didn’t have several hours, so I was glad the Amish recipe didn’t require cooling the dough.

So that I could test the two methods (chilling versus not chilling the dough) I did put a small bit of the cookie dough into the refrigerator while I baked some of the cookies.

Instead of dropping the cookie dough onto the sheet pan, I did roll the dough into balls. I was making these cookies for older kids and decided to add some various sprinkles and colored sugars that I had in my baking drawer. I thought sprinkles would be more appealing than just plain white cookies.

The cookies were baked for precisely seven minutes. When I’d finished baking all the cookie dough that didn’t chill, I removed the remaining dough from the refrigerator and completed the process.

There was no difference in these cookies, before or after they baked and they both took the same amount of time to cook.

Now there was no way I could not test these cookies before taking them to someone else, so Brad and I split one, and we both thought they were a delicious cookie. Both cookie titles are fitting; Amish Sugar Cookie, and Butter Meltaways. The cookies almost did melt in your mouth.

The next day I took the cookies to church and Elaine, the church secretary, said sugar cookies were one of the kid’s favorites. The next day when I went to retrieve the cookie container, Elaine let me know that the cookies were a hit; both with the kids and the adult leaders.

Nailed It – youth approved.

Amish Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened

• 1 cup vegetable oil

• 1 cup granulated sugar

• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar

• 2 eggs

• 1 teaspoon vanilla

• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar

Instructions

• In large mixing bowl, beat the butter, oil and sugars.  Beat in eggs until well blended.  Beat in vanilla.

• In separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda and cream of tartar; add to creamed mixture, mixing well.

• Drop by small teaspoonfuls on ungreased baking sheets.  Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes.  Yield: about 5 dozen cookies.