Sugar cookies made with barley flour - yum!

Soft Barley-Sugar Cookies
King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Copyright 2006

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups whole barley flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sour cream
extra coarse or turbinado sugar for rolling

Cream the butter, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, vanilla, and lemon juice in a medium bowl. Add the egg, beating until smooth.

Whisk the barley flour and all-purpose flour in another bowl. Add half the flour mixture to the butter mixture, beating to combine. Beat in the sour cream, then the remaining flour. Refrigerate the dough overnight (important in order for the whole grain flour to absorb the moisture).

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets or line with parchment paper. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Place the coarse sugar (or regular granulated sugar, if you don’t have coarse) into a small bowl.

Scoop out ¼-cupfuls of dough; a muffin scoop or large ice cream scoop makes short work of this task. Pick up each ball of dough and dip its top in the sugar, pressing down and rolling it around a little bit so the sugar sticks and coats the top third of the cookie. Place dough balls onto the prepared baking sheets. Cookies will spread to about 4 inches in diameter so leave plenty of room between them. Using the flat bottom of a measuring cup or drinking glass, dipped in sugar, to flatten the cookies to about 3/8 inch thick, Sprinkle cookies with additional cookies, if desired, gently pressing it in with your fingers.

Bake the cookies, reversing the pans midway through (top to bottom, bottom to top), until they’re barely beginning to brown around the edges but still look soft in the center, 8 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the pan for 10 minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool completely. To keep the cookies soft, store them in an airtight container.
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I can't believe I never blogged about this recipe that I made back in February (or did I? - I couldn't find it).  I really loved the flavor of these cookies.  I did have some difficulty getting them cooked through correctly but my oven is old and frail. 

I love the flavor of barley flour. I used it before in Multigrain Snickerdoodles, made from another recipe in this book,  which were also great.  That flour wasn't easy to track down once again.  It seems more and more these days I can't find 'odd' ingredients anywhere locally.  Even whole wheat pastry flour has been a challenge to find.  Wegman's always comes through though. 

I needed the whole wheat pastry flour for one of my favorite chocolate chip cookies, Big Chocolate Chip Cookies, an awesome recipe that you really need to check out if you missed it back in 2006.