Soft sour cream sugar cookie bars are all the flavor of Lofthouse style sugar cookies without all the hassle of chilling, rolling, and cutting.
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Pretty much everybody loves sugar cookies. What’s not to love? Soft fluffy cookies slathered with a dollop of creamy buttercream. The only problem? They take FOREVER to make. With the chilling and the rolling and the cutting and the baking. They are no quick undertaking.
Enter: the sugar cookie bar. I hadn’t heard of these until relatively recently but basically, a sugar cookie bar is a sugar cookie dough pressed into a pan and frosted. Easy peasy. Easy enough that it leaves you a little extra time to get fancy with decorating the top.
How to decorate sour cream sugar cookie bars:
Step 1:
Bake the sour cream sugar cookie bars. Allow to cool completely. While the bars are cooling, it’s a good time to make your buttercream. I used American buttercream but I think cream cheese buttercream would also be excellent on these bars.
Step 2:
Divide the frosting. Color 1/3 of the frosting whatever color you want your heart. I used a combination of hot pink with a little bit of purple gel food coloring. Leave the remaining 2/3 frosting white.
Spread the white icing onto the cooled sugar cookie bars.
Step 3:
Cut a large heart from wax or parchment paper. Lay on frosted bars. Add sprinkles around heart.
Tip: add the sprinkles right after you frost the bars. American buttercream is a “crusting” buttercream and round sprinkles will roll right off if not added immediately.
Step 4:
Fit your piping bag with a Wilton 2D tip. Fill your piping bag with your colored (in my case pink) buttercream.
Pipe stars around the edges of your wax paper heart. Try to go around the heart and not get too much frosting on the wax paper.
Step 5:
Pull the wax paper heart off the sugar cookie bars, taking care not to pull too much of your pink frosting off when you do it.
Fill in the heart with swirls and stars. I used Wilton’s 1M tip for the large swirls and stars and the 2D tip for the smaller swirls and stars.
Tip: Go biggest to smallest. Start with the 1M swirls, then the 1M stars, then the 2D swirls, then fill in with the 2D stars.
Soft Sour Cream Sugar Cookies Bars
Equipment
- Mixer
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter softened
- 1 cup sugar granulated
- 1 egg
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 3 cups flour all-purpose
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×13 cake pan.
- If you have a stand mixer-fit with paddle beater. Beat on high speed the butter and until light and fluffy.
- Add in sugar. Beat until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
- Scrape down the sides and turn your mixer to low. Add in the egg, sour cream, and vanilla and mix to combine.
- Scrape down the sides. As the mixer is running on low speed add in the baking soda. Slowly add the flour a 1/2 cup at a time and mix to combine. Final dough will be soft.
- Press into the bottom of a greased 9×13 cake pan. The dough will be sticky. It's ok.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Cool on a cooling rack completely then frost as desired. My preference for these is frosting with buttercream or cream cheese buttercream
American Buttercream
Equipment
- Mixer
Ingredients
- 2 cups butter softened
- 8 cups powdered sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup water
Instructions
- If using a stand mixer, fit with paddle attachment.
- Beat butter until smooth and creamy.
- Add in vanilla extract and beat until smooth.
- Bring mixer speed down to low. SLOWLY pour in powdered sugar and beat until smooth. If you do not listen to me about the slow part, you are going to have a big mess in your kitchen.
- The mixture is going to get thick. With the mixer still running, add water 1 tablespoon at a time to thin it out to desired consistency. Don’t put too much water in at once-you can’t take it out.How do you know what your desired consistency is? Honestly, practice, but I like my buttercream to be easy to stir with a spoon but if you stick the spoon in the frosting it won’t just tip over.
Did you make this recipe? Tag me @bakincareofbusiness on Instagram so I can see what you made!
Love the rolling and the cutting? Try my soft sour cream sugar cookies. Love how easy bar cookies are? Try these kongo bars, they taste like a chocolate chip cookie but you just throw the batter straight into a cake pan.
To make things a little easier in the kitchen, I’ve created a handy printable conversion chart (cause honestly, who can remember how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon?). Sign up below and I’ll send it to you!
Happy Baking!
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