When making the perfect sugar cookie, you'll want to consider whether to use butter or margarine. Here's what you need to know:
- Butter will melt and cause the cookie to spread more, creating a thinner, crisper cookie
- Margarine will produce a more fluffy, chewy cookie
- Margarine isn't the healthier choice due to trans-fats and nothing quite beats the taste of real butter
- some chefs use a bit of both to achieve the best taste and texture
- shortening can be used wherever margarine is used, but it doesn't lend any good flavor
Just a tidbit: Wheat flour contains two proteins, gliadin and glutenin, when wet and mixed they form gluten. The more gluten is worked, the more elastic it gets creating a tougher, more chewy product. But, gluten has trouble forming in the presence of fat - the fat actually shortens the gluten strands, and this is where vegetable shortening gets it's name, though margarine and butter have the same effects. The result is "short doughs" such as sugar cookies, and this is also why you can roll, re-roll, shape, and play with sugar cookie dough as much as you like without hurting the resulting cookies!
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