Tessa’s Recipe Rundown
Taste: The perfect amount of sweetness.
Texture: My favorite part, each bite is the ideal balance between soft and chewy.
Ease: Super easy 30-minute sugar cookie recipe with no chilling required.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe: Fun, simple, and perfect for holidays from Christmas to Valentine’s Day, even 4th of July. Everyone LOVES these cookies.
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Not to boast, but everyone who has tasted or made this sugar cookie recipe has said it became their instant favorite!! It took weeks of testing to get it just right.
These Soft & Chewy Sugar Cookies require NO CHILLING and are incredibly easy to bake up.
Reader Love
Delicious! Just made these with my 3 year old daughter. Easy to follow recipe and will be my go-to for sugar cookies! Only difference was adding rainbow sprinkles (the round ones) to the sugar to roll the balls in before baking.
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This recipe is perfect for your Christmas cookie boxes or just enjoying with a glass of milk. If it’s a warmer time of year, it also makes a great base for ice cream sandwiches!
Originally, I had created a sugar cookie recipe with cream cheese that was ultra-soft. However, I found that it would become claggy, and each bite would get stuck to the roof of your mouth.
After many rounds of recipe testing, I finally nailed a cookie that’s soft and chewy (and STAYS soft) and has that perfect sparkly crackled top.
Sprinkle of Science
How to Make the Best Sugar Cookie Recipe
Ingredients Notes:
- All-purpose flour – Make sure to weigh your flour accurately. If you add too much flour, your cookies won’t spread at all and won’t be soft or chewy.
- Baking powder – This gives the sugar cookies lift, without adding too much spread or browning.
- Fine sea salt – So important to balance the sweetness!
- Unsalted butter – It’s important that your butter is at a cool room temperature (around 67°F), otherwise your cookies may spread.
- Granulated sugar – The star ingredient! Don’t reduce the sugar – find out why here and peek the image below.
- Eggs – One whole egg with an extra egg yolk lends richness and chewiness to the texture. Make sure they’re at room temperature.
- Vanilla extract – No sugar cookie recipe is complete without vanilla extract.
How to Make SOFT Cookies
- The extra egg yolk helps to add more moisture and richness, for a soft and chewy texture.
- The other trick is found in the size of the dough ball…. a whole 3 tablespoons in each! This creates larger cookies that spread out perfectly with ultra-soft centers.
- Whatever you do, don’t overbake this sugar cookie recipe. They should still look ever so slightly ‘wet’ in the center when you pull them from the oven.
How to Prevent Cookie Spreading
To prevent flat sugar cookies that spread into little puddles, it’s important to make sure your butter is at a COOL room temperature.
Your sticks of butter should give slightly when pressed with your finger but still hold their shape. To be precise, your butter should be 67°F.
How to Get a Crinkly Top in Sugar Cookies
Besides rolling in sugar, baking powder is one ingredient that gives these cookies their characteristic cracks, so make sure your baking powder is fresh.
TIP: When the cookies are piping hot out of the oven, use a round cookie cutter to swirl around the edges of each cookie to re-shape into a perfect circle and enhance those crinkly tops.
What Kind of Baking Sheet is Best for Cookies?
The below photo features cookies from the same exact batch of dough, baked for the same amount of time at the same temperature.
2. Wilton Non-Stick: browned heavily with less spread
3. Walmart Mainstays: pale cookies, pan warped and rusted
4. Viking Ceramic Lined: cookies burnt on the bottom
5. Nordicware Unlined Aluminum: my favorite Goldilocks pan*
6. OXO Gold Nonstick: browned heavily with less spread
A light-colored aluminum half sheet pan is my favorite for baking cookies. Avoid dark nonstick pans altogether, they brown too much and may burn the bottoms of your cookies.
Check out my Baking Pans 101 post for all the surprising details.
Parchment Paper or Silicone Baking Mats for Cookies?
I prefer parchment paper for cookies over silicone mats, it’s easier and quicker to clean up. Learn about parchment vs. Silicone mats here.
Whatever you do, never use nonstick cooking spray when baking cookies. This will lead to too much browning and spread (hello, burnt cookie puddles).
Do You Need to Chill the Dough?
It’s not required, baking immediately after mixing will result in absolutely delicious cookies.
However, if time permits, chilling the scooped dough in an airtight container for 24-72 hours does result in cookies that are thicker, chewier, and more flavorful. Roll in sugar after chilling otherwise the sugar will absorb into the dough. Learn more about chilling cookie dough here.
What Temperature and How Long to Bake
Bake at 350°F for 10 to 12 minute, or until the sugar cookies are set and are just beginning to brown around the edges, for classic thick & chewy sugar cookies.
The higher the temperature and/or the longer you bake, the crispier your cookies will be.
If you like really soft, almost dough-y cookies, bake at 325°F, adding a few minutes to the bake time.
How to Decorate Drop-Style Sugar Cookies
This is totally optional, as these cookies are so pretty by themselves – but if you want to make them a more colorful treat, here are my top tips:
- Roll the balls of dough in colored sugar before baking.
- Fold in 1/4-1/2 cup of multi-colored jimmies or holiday jimmies or sprinkles as a last addition to the dough.
- Use my Best Buttercream Frosting recipe for decorating.
- Another favorite is my Best Cream Cheese Frosting recipe!
How to Store Cookies to Keep Soft
Store sugar cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days. Store cookies with a tortilla, apple wedge, or piece of bread to keep them soft for longer.
How to Freeze
This sugar cookie recipe freezes beautifully. Freeze the uncoated, pre-portioned balls of cookie dough in a freezer-safe container, tightly wrapped in plastic wrap, or in a Ziploc bag. Allow them to thaw overnight in the fridge or for 30-60 minutes at room temperature, then bake as directed below.
FAQs
Can I Make This Recipe With a Hand Mixer?
Yes! A hand mixer will work just as well as a stand mixer.
Can This Recipe be Used For Cut-out Cookies?
No, this sugar cookie recipe was designed for simple drop-style cookies. If you want cookie cutter sugar cookies instead, check out my Cut Out Sugar Cookie recipe here.
Why use a cookie scoop?
It makes quick and easy work of portioning the dough uniformly so no one fights over the biggest cookie. I love using a 3-Tablespoon size cookie scoop for this sugar cookie recipe. Learn more about Cookie Scoops and how to use them here!
Can I add almond extract?
Yes! Feel free to add 1/2 – 1 teaspoon almond extract for a fun twist.
Can I use salted butter?
Yes, either omit the salt entirely, or reduce the amount to 1/2 teaspoon.
Soft and Chewy Sugar Cookies
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Ingredients
- 2½ cups (318 grams) all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 sticks (226 grams) unsalted butter, at cool room temperature
- 1¼ cups (250 grams) granulated sugar, plus ¼ cup (50 grams) for rolling
- 1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt to combine.
- In a large bowl, use an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment on medium-high speed to beat the butter and 1¼ cups sugar until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl. Add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla, and beat until combined, scraping the bowl down as needed. Slowly beat in the flour mixture.
- Place the remaining 1/4 cup sugar in a shallow dish. Using a large (3-tablespoon) spring-loaded scoop, divide the dough into balls, then roll in sugar to coat evenly. Place the dough balls on the prepared baking sheets, spacing 2 inches apart, and flatten slightly with the bottom of a measuring cup.
- Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the cookies set and begin to brown. Cool for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Mine is really gooey and not easily shaped. I’m not sure what the problem there is. I’ve placed it in the freezer to try and help it harden a bit so I can work with it. What could I have done wrong?
This is by far the best sigar cookie recipe ive ever come across! Tastes great, and so easy to make too, a big hit with my whole household, thanks so much for sharing it!
These were incredible!! I’ve made them three times this November, and they’ve turned out crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside every time. I suggest 10:30 mins for bake time, and try to use almond extract if you want to. They are delicious. Perfection in the shape of a cookie.
I don’t know what I did wrong? It was really crumbling like I couldn’t pick it up because it was just crumble into a big mess so I don’t really know what to do… Please tell me what I did wrong. I even baked them for a bit longer but it just crumbled again like the one in the pictures 🙁
Hi there! It’s hard to say exactly what happened without being in your kitchen with you. Cookies can crumble if there’s too much flour, not enough fat, the butter wasn’t creamed properly, or they baked a little bit too long. Do you use a digital scale to weigh your ingredients, or did you make any substitutions? Check out the Ingredient Notes above the recipe—Tessa explains what each ingredient does and what to watch out for. I hope you give these cookies another try, they really are worth it! Let us know how it goes.
Everyone’s oven is different. Yours might be more powerful than most. Try baking it for a little less time and packing the dough together (use a little less flour). That might work.
I love these cookies today we are talking them to our new neighbors as a welcome to the. Neighborhood gifts
These were absolutely delicious, however they tasted more like butter cookies than sugar cookies.
It’s great thank you for sharing!
My only question is how I would get them to spread? I’ve made these twice and both times they puffed up and never spread out and were flat, I baked them for 12 mins and put them back in the oven a couple times to reach 15 mins wondering if they would spread more without getting hard but still does not look like yours 🥲
Hi Mai! It sounds like either your butter is too cold or you’re accidentally adding too much flour, which can be super easy to do if you’re measuring by cups! Try using a digital kitchen scale next time, or the spoon-and-level method as explained here. Hope that helps! Let us know how your next batch goes!
Would the butter be too cold from cooling the dough before baking? I ran into the same problem making these. I weighed all the ingredients. The butter sat out for about 1.5hrs, and was almost too soft. I made the dough and refrigerated for about 2hrs before scooping and baking. They didn’t spread much so I ended up with perfectly light brown around the bottom edges, and a raw doughy center. I too tried adding a few minutes in the oven which didn’t help much.
No, chilling the dough before baking shouldn’t thicken them that much! Since you used a digital scale, I’d recommend trying the recipe again and really paying attention to the weights of each ingredient and each step to see if something was missed. Do you have an oven thermometer? I’d be curious if your oven is baking at a higher temperature than you think, too!