Stifflemire’s Melt In Your Mouth Sugar Cookies

Looking for a great cookie recipe? You have found it with Stifflemire’s Melt In Your Mouth Sugar Cookies!

My mother and I are both quilters. Back before I started SouthernPlate and before Mama had all of the grandkids she does now, we were very active in our local quilt guild. We made some wonderful friends there and this recipe is from a very dear lady and mother of 4 and grandmother of 8 (so far). In addition to being in our quilt guild, she also works at our local fabric shop, so we saw her quite often back in our sewing days (we hope we have sewing days again eventually). Anytime Sharon Stifflemire was at Patches and Stitches, you were guaranteed to leave with a smile on your face. She is just one of those people with a contagious inner joy about her. I just love people like that.

These cookies are the stuff of legend in our family and have been ever since Mama got the recipe back in my teenage years. They are something like a pecan sandy, only without the pecans and with a little more delicate crumble, perfect in a glass of milk or all by themselves. Mama and I find them completely irresistible.

I don’t have an ingredients picture for ya today because I wasn’t really planning on doing step by step photos for this pot  but found myself doing them out of habit once I got the dough made. So to make these you’ll need: solid vegetable shortening (Crisco), vegetable oil, powdered sugar, sugar, eggs, vanilla, cream of tartar (found in the spice section), baking soda, salt, and all purpose flour. If you need to imagine a photo of them go ahead and imagine me basking in the sun on a beach somewhere with the ingredients sitting in perfect arrangement at a little table to my right, as if I am going to lounge a bit and then bake cookies in my immaculately clean island home. If we’re going to use our imagination might as well make it good.

Okay, now for the easy part. Well, actually every part of these cookies could count as “the easy part” so this is one of the easy parts.

In a large mixing bowl, place Crisco, powdered sugar, regular sugar, eggs, and vanilla and beat the mess out of it with an electric mixer until it blends together as a sign of unity against your stubbornness.  Now add in all other ingredients and give it a good beating for a minute or two until it looks like the photo above.

“Make sure you don’t taste this absolutely delicious dough because it has raw eggs in it and we don’t want to do dangerous things like that.” she says, as she eats a big old pinch of dough.

You can do this however you want but the idea is to get your dough separated into small balls on a cookie sheet. I use a little cookie dough scoop. Put them on ungreased baking sheets about two inches (ish) apart like this.

Place some granulated sugar in a small bowl and dip the bottom of a glass in it, then…

Lightly press down each cookie just a little bit. We’re not trying to make pancakes here, just press until the top is more flat looking than mounded.

Bake these for 375 for about ten minutes, or until very lightly browned around the bottom edges. Let cool before removing from baking sheets. Makes 4-5 dozen. I can’t tell you exactly but I can tell you that when I made this batch it seemed like I made 5 dozen but by the time photos were taken there were only 4 dozen. I have no explanation for that and my story will not change when pressed, so let us not press 🙂

And here is something I always find interesting to see, the page in Mama’s cookbook where she wrote in the recipe for these cookies. Yes, my mother has lovely handwriting, kind of the opposite of mine, which is why you don’t often see photos of handwritten recipes from me. Oh I have them and I handwrite most of them down for my kids, I just don’t share those publicly when I do so. I’d hate to scare ya.

If my handwriting were to be analyzed it may come back that I’m a serial killer or something. Okay, in truth, my handwriting was analyzed by an expert on a television show when I was in Houston for tv once and she said I was independent thinking, stubborn, creative, determined, and had dirty dishes in the sink. She didn’t really say that last part but I figured I’d throw that in there in interest of disclosure.

Y’all get off the computer and go make some cookies – there is a little “print” button if you scroll down to the recipe so click that and then you can turn your back on electronics and enjoy a day of peace in the kitchen with cookies at the end. OR you could handwrite the recipe but you know the crazy thing is a lot of folks forget that hand copying a recipe is an option – even though that is the only way it was done for countless generations. I seriously have people email me and say that they don’t have a printer so there is no way to save my recipes. Take a moment to turn that over in your head a bit. Yup. I’m serious. May God bless us all.

Enjoy! See that cookie with a bite out of it sitting there? That is a new technique I am patenting called “airing the calories”. The premise is that you take a bite out of a cookie and then let it sit for a minute for some of the calories to dissipate before eating the remainder of the cookie. Roll with it, folks, roll with it!

Stifflemire's Melt In Your Mouth Sugar Cookies

Stifflemire's Melt In Your Mouth Sugar Cookies: something like a pecan sandy, only without the pecans and with a little more delicate crumble.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: cookies

Servings: 4 -5 dozen

Calories: 436kcal

Ingredients

• 1 cup solid vegetable shortening such as Crisco
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla I use 1.5 teaspoons, I like vanilla
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 cups all purpose flour

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 375.
• In large mixing bowl place shortening, oil, sugars, vanilla, and eggs. Beat with an electric mixer until well combined. Add all dry ingredients and beat again until very well blended and a dough is formed.
• Roll dough into 1 inch balls or use a cookie dough scoop. Place about 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheet.
• Using a glass with a flat bottom, dip the glass into a little bit of granulated sugar and then lightly press down the top of each cookie (dipping in sugar again before each one) to flatten the tops a bit.
• Bake for ten minutes, or until very lightly browned around the bottom edges.

Nutrition

Calories: 436kcal

Tried this recipe?Mention @southernplate or tag #southernplate!

 “Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.” 

~Thomas Paine