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 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 an easy sugar cookie recipe that’s soft and chewy (and STAYS soft) and has that perfect sparkly crackled top.
Sprinkle of Science
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 the flavor of vanilla extract.
Keys to 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.
Crinkly Tops 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.
The Best Baking Sheet 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.
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 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.
Freezing
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
Yes! A hand mixer will work just as well as a stand mixer.
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.
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!
Yes! Feel free to add 1/2 – 1 teaspoon almond extract for a fun twist.
Yes, either omit the salt entirely, or reduce the amount to 1/2 teaspoon.
This is totally optional, as these cookies are so pretty by themselves – but if you want to make them a more colorful treat, here some ideas:
-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!
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).
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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.
These sugar cookies are so chewy and delicious! I highly recommend following the directions in using a 3 tbsp scoop. We decided to use a 1 inch cookie scoop and didn’t receive the nice cracking that I believe the 3 tbsp scoop would have. We will be making again!
These were great! I rolled them in sanding sugar instead of regular sugar and they were so festive! Perfect for little plates of cookie presents. Taste great!
These where so fun and festive! I rolled them in colorful sanding sugar and they were a hit. Taste – fabulous!!
A year-round favorite! Perfect as is, or dressed up with sprinkles, frosting, and/or flavoring for any occasion.
Really a delicious sugar cookie. I made three batches for Christmas — some rolled in red & green sugar, some with crushed candy cane pieces in the batter, and some with peppermint flavored white chocolate chips in the batter (didn’t have a chance to bake those yet . . . still in the freezer). Most of all, I love them just as intended—a flavorful sugar cookie that is a little crisp on the edges, and soft in the center. Yum!
Such a great idea, Becky! Each cookie sounds incredible, I’ll definitely be trying your add-ins myself 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
These delightfully chewy sugar cookies were so easy to make!
Easy and delicious!
I made these for christmas/hanukkah with red + green/blue + white sprinkles rolled on the outside, and they were a huge hit. My SO loves soft sugar cookies, and I was concerned these wouldn’t be soft enough with the sugar baked on the outside, but they were! The centers were perfect, even they were a few days old. Plus this recipe was super easy! I’ll be adding these to my regular holiday rotation. I love a festive cookie that requires minimal work to look pretty!
So happy you loved this recipe so much! Thanks for the comment!
These cookies are so easy and very very tasty! I will certainly be making them again and again! My family loves my recipes from Tessa!
Okay, so looking over exactly what I did more closely, I realized that I accidentally under measured my sugar. Could that be why the cookies did not spread and crack as much?
And now I realize that it doesn’t look like my first comment uploaded. The cookies were delicious, but they didn’t crack and spread as much as in the pictures. I did weigh my ingredients but may have accidentally used 10-20 grams too much flour, and looking at the recipe, I realized that I underweighed my sugar. I am assuming that one of these was the culprit, but I am not sure which. I carefully creamed my butter according to your blog post about it, and I baked on a light colored, thin steel cookie sheet.
Hi Audriana! That could definitely have been the issue, glad you realized! Do you own an oven thermometer? If not, it’s also possible that your oven temp may have been off (all ovens are! Mine actually takes an extra 15 minutes after the preheat-complete beep to actually be at the right temp). I’d also make sure that your butter starts out at a cool room temperature (67°F) prior to beating with the sugar. If your cookies didn’t spread very much, it’s possible either your butter was too cold or too much flour may have been added. Reducing the sugar (accidentally) can definitely alter the outcome of the recipe as well. Check out the pink tip box above the recipe for more details regarding how to get that crinkly top, I hope you give this recipe another try!
I rolled half of them in sugar and half in cinnamon/sugar like snickerdoodles. Both were delicious! I did make them smaller since I only had a 2 tbs size scoop. They were perfectly done at 10 minutes.
I just had one problem. They did not spread out as much and crack like your pictures. They puffed up a bit instead with only minimal cracking on the edges. I weighed my ingredients, and used a thin steel with a light colored coating for my baking sheet. I will admit that even though I weighed the ingredients, I may have been off by as much as 10 grams potentially, but that’s it. I followed your blog posts on creaming to get the butter creamed properly. Did I possibly have too much flour? Wrong baking temperature?
Absolutely delicious! I added a tiny bit of orange oil with the vanilla and some cardamom, allspice, and clove into the dough and they were amazing.
Ooo that sounds incredible! I need to try that next time, yum!