Grocery Store Cookies! Sprinkle a Little Holiday Cheer
My favorite holiday cookie of the season is Eric Kim’s (check out his site, wonderful essays, beautiful writing) Lofthouse Style Grocery Store Cookie. It’s surprising since I am not a fan of those ubiquitous cookies with the toothachingly sweet, artificial tasting frosting and eye-popping sprinkles. But his homemade rendition looked so appealing, I had to try them.
Eric’s homage to the grocery store cookies is part of NYTcooking’s week-long video series on Holiday Cookies. He takes the concept of the grocery store cookie and creates a small-batch, no preservatives, all-butter, cream cheese, tender cakey-cookie topped with a sweet, slightly tart raspberry buttercream. The only resemblance to the supermarket cookie is the sprinkles on top!
These cookies are simply DIVINE
The directions are straight forward and if your ingredients are at room temperature, a bowl and a wooden spoon are all you need to make these cookies. How easy is that? But you can be lazy like me and use your stand mixer, especially for the frosting.
Though hand mixing the dough is very doable, if time is short, go ahead and bust out your Kitchen Aid mixer. Combine cake flour and baking powder in a small bowl and set aside. Cream butter, cream cheese, salt, and sugar at medium speed until fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla extract (yes, 1 tablespoon) and beat mixture on medium for approximately 1 minute to aerate and incorporate sugar. Reduce mixer speed to stir or low setting and add flour mixture. Mix just until flour is incorporated. The dough will be very very soft. Toss the bowl into the fridge for 15 minutes to chill the dough so it is easier to scoop.
Use a two-tablespoon ice cream scoop to measure out the dough. Scoop all of the dough and place it on a pan that will fit in your freezer. Place the pan in the freezer to chill the dough (min 10-15 minutes). Do not skip this step, makes the dough much easier to work with, keeps it from spreading, and gives the flavors time to meld.
Frosting Goodness
While the dough is in the freezer, make the frosting. Freeze-dried fruit is the magic that provides both color and flavor to the frosting- it is this tweak that provides the spark in this cookie. The recipe calls for raspberry but strawberry, blueberry or mango freeze-dried fruit would work. I like raspberry not just for flavor but for color, it gives the frosting a hot pink happy glow. Freeze-dried fruit can be found at Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and Target. Grind the fruit into a powder in a mini food processor or place in a Ziploc bag and use a rolling pin to pulverize it. Sift to strain the seeds out of powder. The frosting is sweet, tart, and fruity, just delightful.
Combine the softened butter, fruit, vanilla, salt, and sugar in a mixing bowl. Blend on low speed until the ingredients are mixed together then increase the speed to high and beat until light and fluffy, a couple of minutes, and about double in volume. Set aside.
Take the cookies out of the freezer and roll them into balls (eminently doable thanks to freezing). Place each ball on a parchment-lined cookie sheet 2-3 inches apart. If the dough gets too soft or sticky to work with, return it to the freezer. Flatten each to approximately two inches in diameter and one-inch thickness. Bake 13 to 15 minutes or just until the edge starts to color, don’t over bake. You will be rewarded with a tender, buttery, light cakey-cookie with a wonderful vanilla punch.
The Finale: Cookie + Hot Pink Frosting x Sprinkles = Happy
Swirl a generous amount of the frosting on each cookie and then SPRINKLE-FY each one. These cookies are so indescribably good, put them on your BAKE THESE COOKIES list now.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the 2020 Holiday Cookie Box!
Eric Kim's Grocery Store Cookie
Equipment
- Small sheet pan that will fit in your freezer I have a side by side so sadly a regular-sized cookie sheet will not fit
- Cookie sheets
- 2 Tablespoon Ice cream scoop #40 the size of the scoop will be on it somewhere! Sometimes on the handle or the rim of the scoop, even on the little thing-a-ma-jigger that pushes the dough out of the scoop
Ingredients
Cookie
Da Dry Stuff- Combine in small bowl and set aside
- 2 ¼ cups cake flour (285 grams)
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
Da Wet Stuff
- ½ cup unsalted butter (115 grams) 1 stick, at room temperature
- 3 ounces cream cheese (85 grams) at room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar (200 grams)
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 large eggs at room temperature
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Frosting
- 1 cup freeze-dried raspberries (30 grams) finely ground in a food processor or spice grinder
- 1 cup unsalted butter (225 grams) 2 sticks, at room temperature
- 2 cups confectioners’ sugar (245 grams)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Pinch of kosher salt
Da Bling
- Multi-colored Sprinkles Happy dust!
Instructions
- Make the cookies: In a large bowl, using a spoon, cream the butter, cream cheese, sugar and salt until smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla extract, and whisk to incorporate some air and to dissolve the sugar crystals, about 1 minute. Stir in the flour and baking powder until just incorporated.
- Heat oven to 350 degrees and line two rimmed sheet pans with parchment paper. Using two spoons or a cookie scooper, plop out 2-tablespoon/50-gram rounds spaced a couple of inches apart. (You should get about 7 to 8 cookies per sheet pan.) Place the sheet pans in the freezer for 15 to 20 minutes until the dough is no longer sticky and easier to handle.
- While the dough chills, make the frosting: In a fine-mesh sieve set over a medium bowl, sift the ground raspberries, using a spoon to help pass them through, until most of the ruby-red powder is in the bowl and most of the seeds are left behind in the sieve. (Discard the seeds.)
- To the bowl, add the 1 cup butter, confectioners’ sugar, vanilla extract and salt and, with an electric hand mixer, mix on low speed until the butter absorbs the sugar. Then, turn the speed up to high and beat until the frosting doubles in size, about 2 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula to ensure all the ingredients are incorporated. Transfer the frosting to a small container, cover tightly, and set aside. (You should have about 2 cups of frosting.)
- Remove the sheet pans from the freezer. Roll the chilled dough into even balls and flatten them slightly with your fingers so they’re about 2 inches wide and 1 inch high. Bake the cookies for 13 to 15 minutes, rotating the pans and switching racks halfway through, or until they no longer look wet on top, are still light in color and spring back to the touch. They will puff up and crack slightly. Let cool completely on the sheet pan. (They will continue to cook as they sit.)
- Using a butter knife or offset spatula, frost each cooled cookie with the raspberry frosting and adorn with the sprinkles.
