Sour-Cream Sugar Cakes

These aren’t crisp sugar cookies, they’re little drop cakes: soft, pillowy, cake-crumbed cookies that taste like something your grandmother pulled out of a handwritten recipe box. The sour cream is the star, its acidity activates the baking soda for lift and its fat keeps the crumb tender and slightly moist for days.

The half-butter, half-shortening combination is purposeful. Butter carries flavor, shortening gives structure and keeps the cookies from spreading too thin, preserving the distinctive puffy, cake-like shape. Straight butter would flatten them into wafers.

Alternate the flour mixture and sour cream into the creamed sugar base: this keeps the batter from seizing or curdling, and prevents overmixing the gluten. A light sprinkle of sugar on top before baking gives a delicate crackle to an otherwise soft surface.

Note: the directions list 350°F (175°C) as the oven temperature (the original typo reads “35 F").

Kitchen Tips

• Chill the dough 30 minutes before dropping, it makes neater rounds and less spread.
• Use full-fat sour cream, low-fat versions thin the dough and flatten the cookies.
• Pull from the oven when edges are just golden, centers still pale, they firm as they cool.
• Store in a tight tin with a slice of white bread to keep them soft for a week.

Variations

• Add ½ teaspoon grated nutmeg or lemon zest for a traditional spiced or citrus twist.
• Frost with a simple powdered sugar glaze once cool for an old-fashioned bakery finish.
• Fold in ½ cup raisins or chopped dried cherries for fruit-speckled cookies.