sugar cookie

A sugar cookie, or sugar biscuit, is a cookie with the main ingredients being sugar, flour, butter, eggs, vanilla, and either baking powder or baking soda. Sugar cookies may be formed by hand, dropped, or rolled and cut into shapes. They may be decorated with additional sugar, icing, sprinkles, or a combination of these. Decorative shapes and figures can be cut into the rolled-out dough using a cookie cutter. In North America, sugar cookies are popular during the holidays of Children's Day, Christmas, Halloween, Easter and Hanukkah. Name The name Nazareth cookie came from the people of Nazareth, Pennsylvania who came from Germany. The cookie later took on other names in other countries. In England they were called sugar biscuits as well as jumbles. Sugar cookies were also called gemmells, crybabies, gimbletts, cimbellines, jumbles, and plunketts. History Sugar cookies have a plain flavor and have been made for centuries. The popularity and availability of sugar cookies rose when sugar became widely available. The sugar cookie is believed to have originated in the mid-1700s in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. German Protestant settlers created a round, crumbly and buttery cookie that came to be known as the Nazareth cookie.