Buttermilk Sugar Cookies

Why I Love This Recipe

Found this recipe online and can't wait to make them. Sounds so good and is so neatthat its so old. the website had the following:

Here is a marvelous recipe for Buttermilk Sugar Cookies, by [email protected]. If you would like an article written for your website, please contact by email.

The owner of this recipe, wrote to say, this recipe belonged to her Great--Aunt. A recipe for buttermilk cookies. She said they had redacted it for modern cooking, but had traced the original as far back as 1829 to my 4 greats grandmother. The cookies are incredibly tender and frost well for holiday gifts. Enjoy!

Julia's Soft Buttermilk Sugar Cookies

She wrote: (By the way, she is an incredible person)

I can remember Auntie Julia making these for me every time we came over, The dough should be tender (which is why the refrigeration), and the trick to these is to bake them until they're just "set". The bottom should be just brown, and you have to experiment with them for the heat in your oven to get them right and just cooked all the way through. They freeze really well unfrosted, and if they get dry, you can soften them back up with a slice of bread in with them. She also used to dip her cookie cutters in powdered sugar to help the cookies release (most of the cutters were made by hand for her by her brothers who were blacksmiths and made most of the stuff around the farm). She had a frosting recipe that she never wrote down which she used to decorate the cookies with for holidays (I've never been able to reproduce it because it used liquid milk sugar drawn off from out of the milk tankers after the milk had been unloaded at the dairy --- most of the time it was just tossed before the tanker was scrubbed for the next run, and the farm wives got jars of the stuff for free on pick up days), and then she would put a couple of hot cinnamon candies on them for a bit of a bit (no more than three per cookie depending on cookie size).. Modern buttercream frosting works well, although, I prefer them straight without it to dip in milk.

I also have a recipe for a big soft oatmeal cookie from the other side of the family which is at least as old. I've adapted the recipe to use Oat Trim and Splenda to cut down on the sugar and fat content (Oat Trim is available at King Arthur if you can't find it locally and adds fiber). I'll see if I can find both versions for you to add, too, if you want. She used to send out two of them for my grandfather's breakfast because they were so big, and occasionally varied them by adding in coconut. Lunch was usually Scots eggs (which I also have a recipe for) along with a mason jar full of lemonade in the summer, especially if he went right out to the fields following milking (which started at 4:30 am). I've never found a cookie recipe like it, because unlike most , it only uses white sugar and comes out cakey rather than flat and chewy like most I've seen. I updated the original recipe to use Crisco instead of butter and lard.. I can add the Scots eggs, too. if you like. I don't know if you've ever had them before, but they're hard boiled eggs covered in sausage and breadcrumbs then deep fried. They can be eaten hot or cold, and although we always had them with homemade sausage from the farm, I found the Scots lightened them up by using ground turkey instead of sausage when I went to Scotland in 1990. Both recipes go back to at least 1850 (probably older).

Ingredients You'll Need

2 cups sugar
1 cup shortening
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk (dissolve 1 teaspoon baking soda in buttermilk)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon baking powder
4 cups unsifted flour

Questions, Comments & Reviews