How to Make the Best Sugar Cookie Recipe
Ingredients For the Perfect Sugar Cookie Recipe:
- 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, otherwise your cookies may spread.
- Granulated sugar – The star ingredient! Don’t reduce the sugar – find out why here.
- 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 Sugar 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.
Why Did my Sugar Cookies Spread?
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
Baking powder is one ingredient that gives these cookies their characteristic cracks, so make sure your baking powder is fresh. Check out my Baking Soda vs Baking Powder article for more details and instructions on how to test for freshness.
You also want to make sure that your butter is at a cool room temperature (67°F) as that can affect the appearance of these sugar cookies as well.
PLUS, rolling the cookies in granulated sugar is important! The sugar helps to draw moisture out from the surface of the cookies while they bake, which dries out the tops before the interior sets, resulting in pretty cracks.
Roll Your Sugar Cookie Dough Balls in Sugar Before Baking!
Roll each ball of dough in a shallow dish filled with granulated sugar. This creates that slightly crispy exterior and beautiful sparkly appearance.
Can I Make This Easy Sugar Cookie Recipe With a Hand Mixer?
Yes! A hand mixer will work just as well as a stand mixer.
What Kind of Baking Sheet is Best for Cookies?
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. The below photo features cookies from the same exact batch of dough, baked for the same amount of time at the same temperature. The only difference was the baking pan!
Check out my Baking Pans 101 post for all the surprising details. Or, just click here to score my favorite baking pans for cookies (and everything else!)
Should I Line my Baking Sheets with Parchment Paper or Silicone Baking Mats?
I prefer parchment paper for cookies over silicone mats, to line my cookie sheets. Parchment is easier and quicker to clean up. Silicone mats like Silpats can actually lead to more spreading and browning. Check out the details here.
Whatever you do, never spray your baking sheet, parchment paper or silicone mat with nonstick cooking spray when baking cookies. This will lead to too much browning and spread (hello, burnt cookie puddles).
Why Use a Cookie Scoop?
Do You Need to Chill Sugar Cookie Dough?
It’s not required for this sugar cookie recipe. Immediately baking after mixing will result in absolutely delicious cookies; however, if time permits, chilling the dough for 24-72 hours does result in cookies that are thicker, chewier, and more flavorful. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap before refrigerating. When ready to bake, let dough sit at room temperature just until it is soft enough to scoop. Learn more about chilling cookie dough here.
How Long to Bake Drop Style Sugar Cookies
Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes, or until the sugar cookies are set and are just beginning to brown around the edges. The longer you bake, the crispier your cookies will be.
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.
How to Decorate 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. I like to have one bowl filled with green-colored sugar and a separate with red, for easy Christmas sugar cookies!
- You can also fold in 1/4-1/2 cup of multi-colored jimmies or holiday jimmies or sprinkles as a last step before rolling the dough balls in granulated sugar, to add even more festive colors to this sugar cookie recipe!
- Use my Best Buttercream Frosting recipe for decorating. You can get creative with the flavor suggestions in that recipe post or use gel food coloring to add colorful flair.
- Another favorite is my Best Cream Cheese Frosting recipe!
How to Store Sugar Cookies
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.
Can You Freeze Sugar Cookies?
Yes! 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.
You can roll the cookie dough balls in the sugar before freezing – however, the dough will absorb some of the sugar, and it won’t have quite the same visual or texture impact compared to rolling in sugar right before baking.
Check out my How to Freeze Cookie Dough article for step-by-step instructions (and how to bake from frozen).
hi. may i know if it is possible if i add choc chips or choc chunks or marshmallow in the dough?
Hi Sya! Feel free to add any mix-ins to the dough – or alternatively, feel free to try Tessa’s Soft & Chewy M&Ms Cookies and switch out the M&Ms for the same amount of any other mix-ins you like! Happy baking 🙂
super duper good! might try as cookie cake some time!
can I add M&Ms to the top of these either after or almost at the end of baking? I love a sugar cookie with M&Ms like the malls had in the 90s!
Hi Casey! Sure, you can do that – or give Tessa’s Soft and Chewy M&M Cookies recipe a try instead! 🙂
This is the best sugar cookie recipe I’ve ever baked. I folded in a half bag of toffee bits and they were delicious!!
Absolutely amazing and so dangerous(dangerously AMAZING!)
I’m 16 and making them for my fam and everytime i make them they somehow disappear within the day!
:))
Whipped these up in about 10 minutes, baked for 10 minutes and they were perfect! I only had 1 stick of butter so i halved the whole recipe and they still turned out perfect. Definitely my go to recipe for sugar cookies!
Can you use as a rope cookie
We haven’t tried that, so I can’t say for sure!
will the cookies turn out well if i halve the sizes? i don’t want big cookies and i want to make a lot.
Sure! Just keep an eye on the bake time, as it will need to be reduced.
love these can I double the recipe I know some recipes can’t be doubled or turn out wrong so I just want to know can I double the recipe? but never been able to get soft thick sugar cookies like that so thank you ❤️
Hi Ashley! Yes, you can double this recipe – just be sure that your mixing bowl is large enough for double of all the ingredients to fit and mix thoroughly! 🙂 Enjoy!
Made these last night with my daughter. was spur of the moment let’s try it. we’ve been looking for a cookie to keep the cookie jar filled and think this is it. Saw another comment about didn’t spread out and neither did mine but ya know what I’m okay cause they’re awesome and super soft like I love. I plan to fill jars and give as gifts. might even swap vanilla for other extracts to try. will highly recommend this to other bakers. will also add to holiday cookie exchanges. reminds me of the grocery store loft house cookies without being sickly sweet.. perfect
sugary and chewy! just the consistency i wanted
Best sugar cookie recipe I’ve made. Chewy!!
Amazing cookie taste delicious would make this again. The middle was rich and filling.
I don’t even like sugar cookies but my bf loves them so I mainly started making them for him and then couldn’t deny how soft and satisfying they were to eat. Toss all of the other sugar cookie recipes u might have. These will turn perfect each time whether you freeze them ahead of time or bake them right away.
Very easy recipe, mine didn’t flatten out but still tasted yummy. Would use a baking stone over parchment paper
Hi Heidi! Glad to hear that you enjoyed these cookies, even if they didn’t spread as they should. How do you measure ingredients? When measuring with cups, it’s so easy to accidentally pack a little too much flour into your cup, which changes the chemistry of the cookie and prevents spread. Check out this article, where Tessa explains how to avoid this. I’m also not sure how you baked these cookies, since you mentioned using a baking stone, but perhaps that also baked these cookies a little too well? Baking pans are important in the baking process, as the right materials need to be used in order to allow the cookies appropriate time to spread as they bake, and a baking stone preheated with the oven could potentially heat too aggressively, and prevent the cookies from spreading well. Here’s a couple more articles I recommend checking out (they’re quick but valuable reads!):
– The Best (and worst) Baking Pans
– Oven 101 (important oven info)
I hope this helps! Happy baking 🙂
I’m not sure why it’s making me leave a comment in order to rate it. 5 stars for the recipe though!
Wonderful recipe! My customers love it! I finish it with a modified buttercream frosting. Delish!
I don’t have a stand mixer or paddle attachment with my hand mixer. Can these cookies still be made using a regular hand mixer? Any changes to the recipe in that instance?
Hi Tee! As Tessa mentions in the pink tip box above the recipe, a hand mixer will work just as well as a stand mixer for this recipe. Let us know what you think of these cookies once you’ve given them a try 🙂
I made the cookies. They reminded me of the taste of pie crust with sugar on top. They were soft to eat, but really doughy.
Delicious! Soft and super moist!
I’m giving it 5 because they taste amazing but they don’t look like the picture, they were very puffy. Still a huge hit
Perfection ! Got so many compliments.
perfectly bendy, chewy and DELICIOUS! definitely a 5 star.
These are the BEST sugar cookies I have ever eaten in my life. Super easy to make and absolutely delicious – with an amazing soft, almost fluffy texture. 10/10 highly recommend!
I need to ask, where do you get 318g for 2 1/2 cups AP flour? 120g is the standard weight for AP flour which brings this to 300g… so where’s the 18 from? Also, I just wish people that write recipes for public use would specify what way the measure their flour to get the best end product. Do you actually weigh yours? Or do you spoon flour into a measuring cup then level with a straight edge? Or do you dip into the bag and level with a straight edge? Either of those ways will get you, on average 10 to 30 grams over (or more) the actual 120g cup weight. Which, in turn varies each individual time you make the product and then each person that uses the recipe, without specific measurement details, end up with inconsistent and sometimes disastrous results. If I’m going to share a recipe that I’m used to measuring the flour by spooning and leveling, I will measure it out that way but then I will weigh the flour and then pass the recipe on with just the weight measurements because other ways are too inconsistent.
Hi Macha! The measurement Tessa uses for weighing flour (1 cup = 127 grams) actually evolved over time. It is basically a combination of:
– The weight of a cup of flour using the ‘spoon & level method’ averaged out,
– What Tessa learned in culinary school,
– Alongside the averages of 1 cup from some of Tessa’s go-to resources like Cooks Illustrated (although she found Cooks Illustrated to be too heavy – I believe their 1 cup of flour is 141 grams),
– Factored with the weight of 1 cup of Gold Medal flour vs. King Arthur Baking by their nutrition labels. Tessa’s favorite brand of flour is Gold Medal Bleached Flour and this is what she uses to create and test recipes.
Tessa and our team always test each recipe using weighed measurements, and passionately talk about this frequently on all social media platforms. We wholeheartedly believe that weight-based recipes are more trustworthy and consistent. I encourage you to follow us on Instagram or Facebook for lots of recipes + tons of Science of Baking tips and information!
Oh my gosh best sugar cookie I’ve ever made! I used the Costco organic salted butter and then reduced the salt in half. I also slightly pressed the cookie before and after baking, and it’s seriously SO SOFT. Delightful with my homemade cream cheese frosting.
Can I freeze things after they are baked?
Hi Maryann! As Tessa mentions in the pink tip box (above the recipe), most cookies will freeze best raw and can be baked from frozen. She talks about this more in this post here. These cookies should freeze just fine after baking, but the sugar on the outside may dissolve upon thawing, so keep that in mind. Wrap well in plastic wrap and place inside a freezer bag or an airtight container, for best results.
✨So chewy and delicious and soft
Have made them like 5 times already
The recipe was so easy and the cookies were great.
huge hit in my house! I love them and the recipe is easy.
These cookies are fabulous! So fast! So easy. Nice not having to chill dough. Will definitely keep this recipe!
This recipe worked wonderfully for me! Thank you so much !
Wow the best homemade sugar cookie I’ve ever had. I even had to use half oil and butter combo because I ran out of butter. They came out amazing! Little crispy on outside but chewy!
So easy and delicious!
Is it easy enough to multiply this recipe? I need to make like 20 dozen cookies?
Hi Jaycie! Yes, but keep in mind how much room your mixing bowl has. You want to ensure that your bowl has the capacity for every ingredient to be properly mixed, so I would recommend simply making the recipe multiple times, or (at most) doubling it a few times, until you have the needed quantity. I hope that helps! 🙂
Made these cookies today. I am giving the recipe 5 stars but they do not look anything like the picture on this recipe. They taste really good, they cooked in the amount of time mentioned in the recipe and they are soft but they came out like puffs. They did not flatten out at all and looked like puffy marshmallows on the pan. I followed the recipe exactly without any changes. Not sure why this happened but the cookies are very good and soft just have a different look to them. I would make them again.
Hi Victoria! I’m sorry to hear that your cookies didn’t turn out as they should! How do you measure your ingredients? By volume (using cups), or by weight (using a digital kitchen scale)? When measuring by volume, it’s so easy to mis-measure ingredients (particularly flour) and throw off the entire chemistry of a recipe – and end up with thick, tough cookies that don’t spread as they should. Check out Tessa’s article here, where she talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time. Also, how old are your leavening agents? If your baking soda/powder are not fresh, they won’t do their jobs and your baked goods can not spread properly, fall after baking, and much more. Tessa talks about the science behind leavening agents, and how to test for leavener freshness, in this article here! I hope something here helps, Victoria, and I hope you give these cookies another try sometime – they really are incredibly delicious! Happy baking 🙂
I used cookie cutters to make Easter cookies and this has been the best sugar cookie recipe I’ve tried! I really loved how much you went into detail as to why you did things and the butter pictures really helped!
Hi. I’m searching for a sugar cookie recipe that can be individually pressed into a mini muffin pan and once baked filled with lemon curd. Would this recipe work for that? Thank you.
Hi Jan! Unfortunately we haven’t tried that, so I can’t say for sure! Let us know if you give that a try 🙂
sugar cookie frozen dough put in muffin pan to cook ..has anyone tried this yet! * I’m ore making dough for my Daddie who is terminal . and easy baking is best to ensure he can still do himself .. anything to maintain his independence & dignity give him power ..* I currently freeze dough into logs and he cuts and bakes them frozen ..wanted to take if using muffin pan would work with this rexieoe ..cuz filling those with a custard or my homemade mousse sounds amazing ..ANY HELP OR SUGGESTIONS would be greatly appreciated
Hi Athena! I’m sorry to hear about your dad! I’m sure he will love these cookies. We haven’t tried putting them in a muffin pan, but they do freeze beautifully as balls! Follow the directions Tessa outlines in this post, noting the type of cookie, the bake time and temp on the outside of the container/ziptop bag, and leave in his freezer for baking as he pleases. If you wish to try your muffin tin idea, feel free – it just might take a little experimenting to get the bake time right. I hope you both enjoy this delicious recipe 🙂
can I add brown sugar? how would that effect the end result
Hi Adrian! Yes, you can replace some or all of the granulated sugar in this recipe with light brown sugar! It will change the flavor and texture a little, as brown sugar contains more molasses than granulated sugar – but I personally love the flavor with half granulated, half light brown sugar! Delish 🙂 Let us know what you think!
My husband has Celiacs, so I switched the regular flour to GF flour, and this recipe came out amazing! I cooked them for 13 min in my oven and made about 28 cookies. This is now his favorite cookie!
Best sugar cookies ever!!!
Hi, can I make these with brown butter and then refrigerate the butter, before mixing then chill the dough 2 days? Would any of those latter cookie recipe tips help in this older recipe? I don’t know if I need to adjust anything if I’m doing any of that. I do know for sure, that the chocolate chip cookies all benefited. Thanks!
Hi Danny! Your question is actually a complicated one to answer! American butter is about 80% butterfat and 20% water (on average, depending on the brand of butter), so when you brown butter, you lose that extra moisture/water as it evaporates through the browning process. It takes some experimentation to alter a regular non-browned-butter recipe to work with browned butter for this reason. You can simply try adding a little water back into the recipe, or start with more butter than the recipe requests, in order to compensate for the moisture you’ll lose as it browns. It’s something you’ll have to experiment with a little in order to perfect, but it can be done, and it’s a fun experiment in the meantime! To answer your question about browning the butter in advance, yes you can refrigerate brown butter to use and cream later, but this will react differently than normal butter when creaming, so keep a close eye on it as you cream the two, and look out for the visual cues Tessa talks about in creaming butter/sugar here. Although this sugar cookie recipe is a couple years old, it’s absolutely delicious as-written, too! Let us know how it goes as you experiment 🙂
Thanks 4 the reply! Another question. Is there any difference between using melted butter then chilling vs. using cold butter then chilling? Since they both end up cold and chilled at the end anyways?
Hi Danny! There is a difference and it’s because butter that is too warm (or once became too warm) won’t aerate properly when beaten with sugar. The water and butterfat in butter are an emulsion, which can break when melted and re-solidified, so if your recipe depends on butter to create air or structure, butter that was once melted (or even sat out at room temperature for too long and became too warm) will no longer work to create the necessary structure or stability. This is why most recipes formulated to use brown butter won’t then call for creaming, and why it can take a lot of tinkering to reach a great result (particularly with spread and texture) with an existing creaming-based recipe. They also often need extra leavening agents, to compensate for the lack of structure from the creamed butter/sugar. I hope that makes sense – it’s a complicated one to wrap your head around! I recommend checking out Food 52’s article here, and/or King Arthur Baking’s article here, for more info 🙂
what’s the nutritional information of these cookies?
Hi Marry! We don’t have nutritional information for our recipes, as we believe that dessert should be an indulgence! You should be able to find a nutritional calculator online to assist with this, if you wish! 🙂
I’m giving 5 stars because the recipe mix was great. Flavor and texture were soft and chewy. I followed recipe exactly and did not chill the dough. My cookies spread quite a bit. Next time I will chill the dough and I expect they will be the perfect soft sugar cookie I was looking for. Thanks!
Hi Donna! I’m so glad you enjoyed these cookies, but the excess spread is likely due to your butter being a little too warm when creaming. Check out our notes and tips on this in the pink tip box, above the recipe 🙂 Chilling the dough next time will also definitely give you a thicker texture of cookie, too. Happy baking!
THE BEST COOKIES EVER! DELICIOUS!
Perfect, chewy consistency. Everyone loved them and I am definitely printing this recipe!
Perfect!
love them
best cookies ever
Hya! Idk what I did wrong:( my cookies spread wayy too much, they turned out tasting like baked butter. I think I added too much butter, well that would make sense, but I used everything how the recipe said. Through trial and error I tried baking ones with more flour (like a LOT more, maybe 150 grams more), and they held their form a lot nicer. They still taste very buttery, like I can’t eat more than one, because I feel like my heart will start fat burning. Anyway, all this ended with me mentally breaking down:(
I love that others love this recipe, but I’m helpless and don’t know what went wrong…
Hi Sam! I’m so sorry these cookies didn’t turn out as they should! It can be hard and upsetting when things don’t turn out, but please try not to beat yourself up – with each baking mistake, we learn – and that’s how we improve and get better! Without having baked alongside you, it’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly what went wrong here, but here are a few things that may have caused your cookie issues here:
– Is it possible something was mis-measured? How do you measure your ingredients? By volume (using cups), or by weight (using a digital kitchen scale)? When measuring by volume, it’s so easy to mis-measure ingredients (particularly flour, but potentially butter in your case too?) and throw off the entire chemistry of a recipe. Check out Tessa’s article here, where she talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time.
– Was your butter maybe too warm when you went to cream it? We were all taught growing up that totally-room-temp butter was what we needed to bake with, but it’s not true! About 65-67°F is perfect when creaming. Slightly cooler butter like this will give you thicker cookies that don’t spread as much, and have a better consistency. The length of time you cream for also plays into this. Have a look at this article, where Tessa shows some great visuals and explains why butter temperature and creaming time are important.
– How old is your baking powder? If your leavening agents (baking powder, in this case) are not fresh, they won’t do their jobs and your baked goods can not rise properly, spread too much, fall after baking, and much more. Tessa talks about the science behind leavening agents, and how to test for leavener freshness, in this article here.
– Finally, what type of pan are you baking on? Different materials of pans conduct heat differently, so some will cook the bottom quickly, and not leave the cookie appropriate time to spread out gently and evenly. Tessa discusses and shows the differences between a variety of baking pans in this article here!
I hope something here helps, Sam, and I truly hope you give these cookies another try. They really are soooo good! Remind yourself that it’s just baking and it’s okay if they’re not perfect. We all get it wrong sometimes, and that’s totally okay. Be kinder to yourself 🙂 Hugs from Team HTH!
The cookies were delicious and very soft!
My father considers himself to be a connoisseur of sugar cookies. I made these for him (it’s a fun recipe to make), and he decided they were the best he’s ever had and requests them constantly.
Tessa, can you tell us what temperature the dough should be if it was refrigerated overnight? Specifically, how cool should the cookie dough balls be before going in the oven? Does this affect the baking temp or time or the flattening required given that the dough is much colder?
Hi Theresa! If you’re refrigerating the dough overnight and then baking, it’s totally fine to bake straight from the fridge – you might just find that they bake up a little thicker and taller than if you were to bake before refrigerating. If you’re baking from frozen, more adjustments are needed – but just from the fridge won’t make much of a difference to the timing of the baking; the most you would need to add to the bake time is a minute or so. I hope that helps 🙂
can you freeze the cookies after baking?
Hi Cassandra! You absolutely can, though we actually prefer to freeze the cookie dough unbaked in order to enjoy freshly baked cookies at a moment’s notice 🙂 In testing, we found that we preferred the texture and flavor of this versus baking the cookies, then freezing. Check out the pink tip box above the recipe for more details. I hope that helps!