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 are delicious sugar cookies. Not too sweet and they look very festive rolled in colored sugar. Careful not to over beat the butter and sugar or they will be FLAT. I ended up making a second batch (darn) and they rose nicely. Very quick to whip up too.
So glad you enjoyed them, Lisa! Thanks for commenting your advice 🙂
These are so delicious and easy to make! Definitely a keeper!
These were the softest sugar cookies I’ve ever made. Great Recipe
Wonderful! So happy you loved them, Sandra!
BEST recipe I’ve ever tried! The perfect sugar cookie !
The only thing I differently was NOT smash them flatter. I just left them in balls. It made them thicker and less flat and crispy But, I’m at high altitude.
Thanks for your high-altitude feedback, Rachel!
I would love to make chocolate sugar cookies – what would I need to add to create them
Hi Sue! We haven’t tested adding chocolate to this recipe, so I can’t say for sure! We do have a Chocolate Sugar Cookie recipe (ignore the pumpkins haha!) if you’re interested, though it’s not as soft and chewy as these, they’re more soft but sturdy. Perfect for decorating! Here’s a link: https://handletheheat.com/jack-o-lantern-cookies/
Deliciously soft and sweet. I vanilla shines through. A chewy cookie, great with a glass of milk!
These are delicious! I had a run in with a bad sugar cookie YEARS ago and it ruined them for me- until now! Perfectly buttery and soft. I added some festive sprinkles to the sugar for rolling and it worked well. (I didn’t have enough to mix in the dough). Froze the rest of the batch so I can leave these for Santa later 🙂
Wonderful! I’m so sorry of your bad cookie experience, thank you so much for trusting our recipes to try again 🙂
So Yummy! I covers half my cookies with granulated white sugar as the recipe calls for and the other half with cinnamon sugar. Both delicious!
Ooo great idea adding cinnamon to the sugar!
If I don’t have fine sea salt, can I use regular table salt or kosher salt?
Hi Caroline! While we prefer fine sea salt for best results, you can use table salt. I wouldn’t suggest kosher as the amount needed would be different. Please let us know what you think 🙂
These are my favorite! I got so many compliments on them! I added rainbow sprinkles to add some color. Once again, Tessa’s recipes prove to be amazing!
So happy you loved this recipe, Leah!
The cookies are very good. However because of their size I found I had to cook them an additional 3-5 min.
Glad you enjoyed your cookies, Sarah Anne! Thanks for the feedback 🙂