Not-Too-Puffy Sugar Cookies

As I've mentioned before, I am a HUGE fan of cookie cutters. But not just any cookie cutter will do; only the weirdest and geekiest will find a happy home in my kitchen.

So when PAX East (the gaming convention held in Boston that I attend every year) rolled around and I started to think up cookie ideas for the Cookie Brigade (a group that gives away cookies to PAX attendees and takes donations for Child's Play), I knew I had to be on the lookout for more geeky stamps.

And then I found my new favorite Etsy shop, WarpZone. It is FILLED with amazingly-detailed, highly geeky cookie cutters made using a 3-D printer. I had such a hard time picking some and not just buying everything she had. I'm actually still fighting that temptation...

I opted for Doctor Who (above) and Archer (below). The Archer ones are awesome, but they were a little too delicate because of how the heads stick out for me to bring to PAX again. The Doctor Who ones, however, turned out AWESOME! I got great response when I was handing them out, and I'm really happy with how the food coloring in the dough turned out. The weeping angels turned out the best, because I used black dye and marbled it in a bit to look like stone.

Oh, and Cookie Brigade ended up raising $17,650 this PAX East!!! How incredible is that?!

The problem with these kinds of cookie cutters, though, is that you need to use a dough that doesn't rise too much in the oven. My usual sugar cookie recipe puffs up a fair deal. Luckily, I found a great recipe in an old issue of Cooking Light, and I ended up making 6 batches of it. It's not a particularly special sugar cookie recipe, but I like to keep track of anything I've had substantial results with. It's also a fairly forgiving dough - I rerolled it and rerolled it after screwing up quite a few times (these cookie cutters need the dough to be a very specific thickness), and I didn't feel the quality of the cookie suffered. I will DEFINITELY be making these cookies for PAX again next year.

Not-Too-Puffy Sugar Cookies (adapted from Cooking Light)
1 cup sugar
10 Tbsp butter, softened
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract or paste
2 egg whites
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour

In the bowl of a mixer, cream together sugar and butter. Beat in vanilla and egg whites, then beat in baking powder and salt. Slowly add flour until combined. Divide dough in half, shaping each half into a disk. If you want to add food dye (I recommend gel food dye) to the dough, gently work it in now (don't forget plastic gloves!). Wrap with plastic wrap and chill at least one hour.

Preheat oven to 375°. Lightly flour your rolling surface, then roll dough out to desired thickness (about 1/4 inch for these cutters). Stamp away to your heart's content! Place cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet with about 1 inch between cookies. Bake for 10 minutes or until just starting to brown at the edges.