My First Sugar Cookies

So, my friend Jen recently made these killer sugar cookies, and I was inspired to try some of my own. Even though I'm really good at baking cakes, I've been hesitant to bake cookies because my mom can't bake a cookie to save her life. I mean, she's a great cook, but baking cookies is definitely not her thing, and I've been afraid that the "bad cookie gene" has been passed along to me. So, I shook off the fear and looked up what I thought was a good sugar cookie recipe. I found this one and thought it seemed perfect - quick, easy, and only 6 ingredients (the almond extract doesn't count).
This is the batter. It looks like whipped butter because, well, it's whipped butter with a little sugar, flour, and vanilla mixed in. :) No, seriously, this recipe has TWO STICKS OF BUTTER!

The directions say to use two spoons to spoon the dough onto the cookie sheets. Yeah, right. I've never been good at that. I just used my hands. It worked a lot better and saved me about 20 minutes and a lot of irritation and mess. Oh yeah, and I only use AirBake cookie sheets. I've never ever burned the bottom of a cookie when I use an AirBake cookie sheet.Here they are! They turned out really really well, and they were mixed, baked, cooled, I'd eaten a few, and the kitchen was clean in just a little over an hour. I observed that it seems there is a critical mass at which cookies spread rather than rise. The smaller balls of dough ended up bumping up, and the larger ones spread out. I'll keep that in mind next time and "spoon" accordingly. Also, someone posted a comment that a Tbs. of sour cream, yogurt, or buttermilk could be added to make the cookies softer, so of course I did that (I used buttermilk but would love to try sour cream next time), and I think it helped keep the cookies from getting overly dry. They only needed to bake for 9 minutes, too, which is fabulous!I've got my Wonder Woman glass of milk - I'm ready to go! :) This is definitely a recipe I'm going to save and use over and over again. The recipe said it could make up to 4 dozen, but I made 2.5 dozen. I made some kind of big, but not that big. I'd say it's more like 3 dozen, if you're lucky. Regardless, they're delicious!