- Hey everyone, you're watching Pretty Kitchen
where I, John Kanell, teach you
how to make delicious homemade dishes
to share with your family and friends.
Do you hate,
(growls)
(laughing)
those cookies that you make where the butter
becomes all gloopy and blobby
and like, they just kind of spread out in the oven
- Yeah.
- Your hands are all sticky?
This is a magical chocolate cutout cookie recipe
where it's like no fuss, no muss, you're done,
laser sharp edges.
And they are--
- Gorgeous.
- Delicious.
Today I'm at my friend Amy's house.
She invited me over for some holiday baking.
Especially because she took pity
on a kitchen-less food blogger
(laughing)
The kitchen's almost done
We have our appliances.
- And cabinets come at the end of the week.
- I filled her in.
Yes (laughs), cabinets are coming too.
Let's get started.
For this recipe,
we're gonna to use two,
it's like really simple,
it's like a two-one-one recipe.
- I like it.
- So, two cups of flour
but, there's a little twist,
and it's not because I like making this more difficult,
it's to make you have the best cookie ever.
Two cups of all-purpose flour is 120 grams.
No, two cups is 240 grams.
What we're going to do is actually now,
take two tablespoons out.
And I'm just going to go like one, two.
So now I have 225 grams.
And we're gonna replace that with cornstarch.
- Oops!
- Do you ever do that for your cookies?
- No, I've never done that before.
- Okay, so, if you've seen
my no Spread Sugar cookies recipe,
which you can click up here for,
(giggles)
it makes things really hold together.
The cornstarch does some magic,
and you can tell when it's mixing.
Because you know how like for regular sugar cookies
they kind of are gooey, and you have to chill them?
- Yeah they're very soft, yeah.
- These form like a non-Newtonian liquid situation,
where they just like, it's like a ball.
- And it's...
- And you can, you can pat it doesn't get on your hands.
It's just the cornstarch.
- Huh, how about that?
- It also gives you a little bit of a crisper cookie.
The benefit is, a little crisper, and laser sharp edges.
You're going to love it.
- That's beautiful.
- One tablespoon in, two tablespoons in.
I hate the way cornstarch feels.
- I know, it kind of makes your teeth like hurt.
(laughing)
- Let me know in the comments if you actually like it.
Because I had some people tell me they like the feeling.
And I'm like
(gasps),
it's literally my worst nightmare.
(laughing).
So, for a chocolate cookie
I always love a lot of salt.
Do you like salty cookies too?
- Yeah, especially when chocolate's involved enhances it.
- It feel like chocolate salt really like it comes alive.
So I'm gonna use 3/4 of a teaspoon of salt.
And now for the cocoa powder, stand back.
They're not wearing an apron.
- No apron
- This is a combo of natural and Dutch cocoa powder.
- Okay.
- Do you have a favorite?
- I think I like the Dutch best.
- Yeah. I actually liked the Dutch best too.
In this cookie this works.
Dutch gives you like a fudgier cookie
and it's also much darker.
This is like a blend one 1/4 of a cup
and we're gonna add 3/4.
- Okay.
- There we go.
- Perfect.
- So 3/4 of a cup of cocoa powder.
- Mmm the smell!
- This is gonna smell crazy in the oven, just you wait.
And now I'm gonna carefully sift
it into this pretty pink bowl.
If you watch the channel, you know that I'm very spillsy.
Easy spills a lot.
(coughing)
- Excuse me, I just inhaled chocolate
(laughing)
- Oh my gosh.
So, if you've watched the channel,
you know that I am super, I try my best,
but it's just not happening.
So like there's always like a spill,
something flies up in the air,
it's like a Goldilocks situation and--
- Or your co-host is choking on chocolate.
- Oh my gosh.
Wait, is this the whisk drawer too?
- Yeah, that is.
- Okay.
- That's the stirring.
- That's a stirring draw.
I need you to come and whisper some organization
into the new kitchen once it happens
- Okay, I need feel like I need a mask.
- It's so intense.
- It's pretty intense.
Okay, now we're gonna set it aside and move back
right after a little wiping.
(gentle music)
- Amy is pointing out like this is probably hard
cause it's so cold in here.
It's like, what is it?
- It's probably 65 degrees
- But that's not even cold
but like in LA room temperature is like a constant
72 - 72
72 degrees all year around.
It's so interesting because now I'm getting
such a good perspective on other people's problems.
- Yeah
- Like on my Swiss Meringue Buttercream recipe,
people have talked about curdling and I'm like,
what are you talking about?
Like it might turn
into a soothe because it's too warm,
but then you do X, Y or Z.
It curdles because the butter is cold room temperature
and you haven't finished adding it in.
- Yeah
- So I'm like, Oh, now I get it.
Something, gosh, I had like a lot of...
- You think what the counter...
sorry, didn't mean to cut you off,
but the countertop material that you have makes a difference
in how cold your butter is.
- Interesting, is this like warmer because it's concrete?
- Not particularly
- Is it colder?
- I'd say it's a little colder.
- Oh my gosh! I had no idea.
Alright, we're adding in one cup or 226 grams
of unsalted butter into a stand mixer and Amy has the big
professional one which I'm excited to use,
I've never used one before.
I have many stand mixers as you know,
but they're all like the normal size, the middle size,
- This was like a holiday gift a few years ago.
- Here we gonna cream it up just
for like a minute or two if it's cooler and then...
- There you go.
(mixer shrilling)
- Okay, that's nice and creamy.
That's like an aircraft machine.
It's like boom!
- It's gonna take off.
(laughing)
- Now I'm gonna add in one cup or 200 grams
of regular granulated sugar.
I've been making a lot of Meringues lately,
so I'm like drizzle the sugar in, drizzle, just dump it in.
Just dump it in.
You don't need to make this butter light and fluffy
you're really just incorporating it.
- Okay.
- You kind of actually don't want to add
that much air into the butter, a little bit is totally fine.
And I'm scraping the bowl down because
it needs to be all mixed in there.
- It smells so good
holiday bakery season is on.
- Butter and sugar is a revelation let me tell you.
One more mix
- Are there eggs in this recipe?
- Yes.
- I don't see them.
- I forgot to bring one, bring in the eggs.
(laughing)
- How about you borrow one of mine?
- Can I borrow one of your eggs?
Okay, thank you.
(laughing)
Oh dear.
- Is it one or two?
- Just one egg.
- Okay.
- These are heirloom.
- Oh my gosh.
- Are you gonna have heirloom chickens when you're--
- Yes.
Oh my gosh, it was a whole chicken thing happening
That's me in another video.
Look how pretty this is.
Do you see this color?
I would wear this it goes with my outfit.
- Yeah, it totally goes with your outfit.
That's why I picked it out.
- Thank you.
- Gotta crack it in there like a devil.
Well actually adorable.
- Yeah, that'd be pretty.
You wanna see it?
- Just for you.
Normally I was...
Huh! Oh my gosh.
- Aren't they gorgeous?
- One egg in, mix it up, Scrape it down, mix it again.
Now there's all creamed up, you gonna add in a teaspoon
of vanilla and this is coffee with milk in it.
You don't have to use the milk.
I just literally stole it from my coffee
and a teaspoon of coffee.
- That's like the secret ingredient
- Coffee and chocolate is like
also coffee, salt and chocolate is like,
(dog barking)
- He says all this, talk about cookies
(laughing)
- It sounds like Tik Tok
Amy has the cutest and most photogenic
standard poodle named Torin.
(dog barking)
He's like, I know you're talking...
- He's also very, very talkative today.
- Okay, one moment, that's it.
Now we're gonna add in our very powdery chocolate mixture
and I'm gonna show you what I like to do.
So we're gonna dump this in and here's my attempt
to like not have it be a cloud cause it's actually--
- Yeah, because it is almost choked me.
- She's like, I'm dying.
It's like...
(laughing)
So right now I'm just hand mixing it a little bit
and you don't need to do this but it'll get things started
and you don't have to scrape the bowl down
as much afterwards.
- Well that makes sense.
You don't wanna know what I do.
- What do you do?
(dog barking)
I use that attachment thing
- Aha,
- But then--
- The tea towel?
- I take a tea towel.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- I'm all about the tea towel life.
(giggling)
Insert tea towel montage.
You might want to cover it with a tea towel if needed
cover the mixture with a tea towel
the tea towel
cover with a tea towel
Thank you.
Alright, Should we get a tea towel out?
- We could.
- It's gonna be crazy.
- Is it?
- Yeah.
- Okay, do you want it...
Unless you start attachment
let's do it Amy style.
- Okay Amy.
(laughing)
Oh, even with the tea towels I hear you.
Definitely.
- Yeah, and then just turn it on.
That was easy, right?
- Yes
- And it's probably safe now.
- So you wanna mix this until it comes together
and you're gonna notice it gets darker and changes color.
- Yeah, I see it already.
- Don't be discouraged if it's like light for a while
it just takes a minute.
- Wow, it looks nice and fudgy.
- Super fudgy.
I'm gonna take this down, I don't wanna have any big blobs
of that sugar butter, so I just wanna make sure we get all
those off cause that can ruin a cutout cookie.
- It makes them all spread out then, right?
Even though you have--
- Even though you have a pool of butter that is melt
how does it a lot of people for pastry crust
(mixer shrilling)
And now we're done.
- Okay
- So this butter's finished.
I'm gonna roll it out now when it's wet.
But, I'm using the same technique that I do with my fancy
tarts, which is to roll it out between two layers
of parchment paper.
- Okay
- Now we're gonna dump this out and you can use
plastic wrap if you want to, I actually like the paper
a bit more though because I find it's more forgiving
and I think it's like nice to use less plastic.
- Yeah, for sure.
- Do you even have plastic wrap at your house?
- I don't.
(laughing)
Do you want me to take that out to the sink?
- Yeah, you can take it.
All those delicious dough and you can smell it already.
- Smells really good.
- Okay.
- Done with them?
- Yes, thank you.
- In the sink they go.
- So, you have a couple of things you could do.
I'm gonna use my clean hands
and just give this a good smash.
I'm not kneading it, I just wanted to like get studded.
- Yup.
- Then, I'm gonna use a knife and I'm gonna trim it.
Cause I like my cookie to be like a square.
Now, Amy has a bunch of beautiful rolling pins
and I have a little collection myself and I was telling
her that this is my favorite rolling pin and I bought
it on one of the trips to Connecticut before we moved out,
it has these bumpers, so whenever I make like a fancy tart
or something it has to be exactly one eighth of an inch.
These bumpers do a perfect job.
This cookie today is going to be, a quarter of an inch.
Exactly!
- Cool.
- You don't have to use it, but I think it's funny because
I have the nice wood ones, the French rolling pins,
the ones that you can hang up
- And this is the one that wins?
- It wins a lot of the time.
And then I also will just be spreading it out.
And then the nice thing about parching paper is you just
lift it up and reset it if it gets wrinkled.
- I've never done this before between two.
- Okay, now we can get to rolling and you see the wrinkles?
- Yup
- Just lift it up.
- And that's handy too
- Yeah.
See how clean it is in these?
- I love it! It like makes me so happy.
- And you can have really laser thin cookies too
if you use this or if you have a good eye
she might have a better ride than I do.
I have a secret to tell you.
- Yes
- I knew that it was to be a little bit longer
to film here today and I'm already like super imposing
upon your time, so I brought out a swap out of chill dough
so we can like just...
- That's brilliant
- Go straight to the cookie cutting.
- All right.
- You're gonna notice the parchment paper
might be a different color.
- Okay.
- This though would just go on a baking sheet
and pop it into the fridge.
- So this is going into the fridge and we're gonna take out
the other one that's--
- We gonna tray this.
- Cool.
- Bye bye
- I love that it just sticks to it.
- So here's our swap out, I used my brown parchment paper
and what I'm gonna do right now to help them pop out easily,
I'm just gonna lift it off, place it back down.
And then we're gonna flip it over again and lift it off,
set that aside.
Now we can just cut our cookies out.
I'm using two shapes, my favorite, this is so boring,
but I love around cookies and I have this favorite graduated
circle set that I am obsessed with.
There's a link in the description below,
as well as for the rolling pin if you wanna pick one up.
- Nice.
- And then we're just gonna pop them out.
- Look at that, it's perfect.
- I'm like giggling with glee right now because,
Amy is an expert cookie maker.
And I feel like I've been approved.
- I think you have, I love it.
- So they come out really easily and for fun,
I like gingerbread
- Yeah
- But I love chocolate.
So I wanted to make like a chocolate gingerbread man
so you go ahead.
- May I?
- Yeah, please do.
- Alright.
It's this dough smells so incredible.
- We'll have to wait.
I'm not one to boast, but wait til it goes into the oven
it's gonna be crazy
- This is a lovely dough.
- It's the cornstarch
- And they're so easy to like pop out.
- The cornstarch and the cocoa powder
make a huge difference.
- Really, they truly they do.
- All done cutting, this dough can get rolled up
and either put back in the fridge or in the freezer
for later.
Just wrap it really well.
- I love it.
- And then this, I'm gonna sort of transfer right over
here like that, that's a nice thing
than using the parching paper too you can just literally
reuse it for the baking.
And you do wanna give these cookies a little bit of space
they don't need that much but at least an inch.
So these are gonna be in the oven for about 10 minutes.
- Okay.
- The cookies are just cool enough to touch and the house
smells like chocolate which is a really nice smell to have.
- So good.
- And while they were baking, we melted some white chocolate
for dipping.
This is the easiest way to decorate cookies,
which I highly approve of.
You know why like a fancy cake?
(dog barking)
- You've been teasing him all afternoon, he's like
"woof, I've had it"
- Poodles are very smart,
so like he's actually able to understand.
Okay, so you know I like a fancy cake or pastry.
(dog barking)
I'm gonna dredge it a little bit.
(dog barking)
- It needs to go out.
(laughing)
- Here we go, that's all I have to do.
- Huh, Oh isn't that pretty?
- Kind of like a black and white cookie.
- I love it.
- But, if you want to make it holiday,
which you don't have to, but I just sprinkle a little bit
of crushed candy cane on here.
What's this?
- Perfection
- Delicious, peppermint white chocolate.
- That works. - What a nice thing
- You can do a couple more.
Do you wanna try one?
- Sure
- Smear, I like it.
Perfect.
And then you could also do a drizzle, so let's--
- Oh yeah.
- Bunch a couple together, I like that as well.
- So nice.
- The chocolate has like a beautiful consistency too.
- Really
- Here we go.
Do you want to give them a couple of middle sprinkle?
- A little bit.
I can't resist.
- Oh, that's pretty, I like it.
The chocolate is still not dry.
Should we give it a taste.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
- Okay, now I need a cup of coffee to go with it.
- Yes.
- What nice flavor.
That's delicious.
- Thank you.
Thank you unbiased taste tester.
(giggles)
- No, it's so good.
- Thank you so much for having me over and baking,
and spending the day it was just really fun
and I feel like making cookies is so much better
in pairs or groups.
- Well, it's always a pleasure to have you here.
- If you wanna see Amy giving me the best tutorial
on flower arrangement, it was like so mesmerizing
to watch, just very relaxing while arranging.
Click over here, and in the meantime,
hit that like button subscribe
and I'll see you in the next video.
- See you.