A few weekends ago I picked up these cool Star Wars cookie cutters since my brother’s kids are getting into Star Wars now. I thought with the holidays coming up, we could have some fun making and decorating some SW cooks. I want to do my part as a good uncle and, besides, they need to know about the Dark Side before the cool kids at school start telling them that everyone shoots lightning from their fingertips.
This past weekend I had a test run to see how well they’d work and what recipe would be best. I always remember sugar cookies as basically being little rice cakes with icing. There had to be a decent recipe out there. I opted to try three different recipes and mix any left over dough for a semi-fourth. Since there are four cookie cutters, this worked out perfectly. One shape per type of dough.
I first checked out my favorite recipe testing ground – America’s Test Kitchen. It yielded this recipe. Like me, they agreed that sugar cookies really are not very good most of the time. Their recipe really jumpstarts the flavor by browning the butter (giving it a butterscotch flavor), using brown sugar, and a ton of vanilla. It turns out they are right. Melanie and I agreed that this was easily the tastiest cookie. The problem is that they cheated to do it. Everyone knows that sugar cookies are only made to cut into special shapes (and usually frost). These cookies only work if made into a standard cookie disk. What’s the point? If you wanted regular-shaped cookies, you would have made chocolate chip. As you can see below, “Blobba” Fett lost his shape almost completely. No good.
Next up I searched online and came up with this recipe. It was the highest rated by the most people. It must be good right? Wrong. These were the worst cooks of the group. Almost zero flavor.
It turns out the best recipe was the one that came in the box with the cutters. Two points for Williams-Sonoma. The cooks were relatively sweet (even if it was not a complex flavor), they kept their shape great and the dough was pretty easy to work with.
The mixed batch was not good. The different doughs cooked at different rates so we got marbled cooks that were soft and bland and tooth-shattering and semi-burnt all in one mouthful. I chose to eat the roughly dozen of these to spare anyone else from the dental distress.
The cutters themselves performed flawlessly. They cut the dough easily and imparted distinct and detailed accents to each cookie. They cleaned up relatively easily. I recommend pushing the plunger all the way down and scrubbing the edges of the face with one of those dish toothbrush thingies to prevent dough from hardening up there.
So there you have it. Williams-Sonoma Star Wars cookie cutters and the included sugar cookie recipe is the way to go. Let me know if you try them out. Let me know if you make sugar cookies in any other cool shapes (Yes, I will delete R+ rated responses).
Jason Patz 
I’ve got a recipe my mom started making with me at Christmas when i was about 3. I find them very tasty. But the dough has to be refrigerated over night before you cut the cookies. I’ll send it in email soon.
Hahahha ohhhh why don’t I live closer to you guys!?
I bought these cutters for Jon a couple months ago. I finally gave them to him and made cookies using the same “zero flavor” version you tried. Despite a couple broken Boba Fett antennae, the cookie cutters do work awesome! The biggest experiment was trying to ice them – ours looking NOTHING like the box photos… we had pink Boba Fetts and grey Darth Vaders.
What did you use to ice them? Lee Anne suggested a goodie with colored sugar pressed into the formed dough.
I did royal icing – not thin enough to see the impressions at all. But, I will have to say it saved the flavorless cookies by sweetening them up A LOT. 🙂
Now we’re wanting to try to make cut out chocolate chip cookies with them, but not sure how that will turn out. I’m thinking if you can keep the dough cold enough, it might work.
I think that might work, but, boy, they would probably spread a lot during cooking. You’d probably have to make the dough, cut the shapes and then press the chocolate chips into them. Maybe if you added a ton of extra flour they’d keep their shape?