Dropped Cracked Sugar Cookies

I love a good sugar cookie. I love it even more when I can whip up a batch in minutes and totally skip all the steps of rolling and cutting out shapes!!! Roll the dough in festive colored sugar or sprinkles for your next party or skip the rolling in sugar step and frost them instead.

Dropped Cracked Sugar Cookies

via savorysweetlife

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups white sugar

1 cup butter

3 egg yolks

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar*

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1/3 cup coarse sugar crystals or regular granulated sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar together. Mix in 1 egg yolk at a time and vanilla extract. Add flour, baking soda, cream of tarter, and salt until cookie dough is completely mixed, scraping down sides occasionally. Using a medium scoop, form dough balls and roll them in sugar crystals. Place cookie balls 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (or lightly greased.)  Do not flatten the dough.  Bake for 12-14 minutes until the surface of each cookies have a cracked like texture. Remove from oven and allow cookies to remain on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.  Enjoy!

Notes:

• I've made these both with and without the cream of tartar and they've turned out fine. So don't let the fact that you're out of cream of tartar stop you from baking these goodies!
•  I'll have to update the photos in this post when I bake these cookies again...I snapped a few pictures of these orange/red sugared cookies before my little ones and I decorated them as "turkeys" for a party we had around Thanksgiving time. I'll include a picture of our finished project if you promise not to laugh... ;) Hey, my two and four year old thought they were awesome.