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.
Great tasting cookie
These were definitely everything I was hoping for! I prefer them on the underdone side and noticed that to achieve this you actually have to pull them out BEFORE the edges start to brown, like the recipe in the book says. They do still need to look slightly wet in the centers. This was right around 11 minutes at 350′ for me. Will be making again for sure!
Glad you enjoyed them, Erica 🙂
These are so yummy and festive! We loved how chewy and sweet these sugar cookies are.
Wonderful to hear this!
These cookies turned out so good! Very easy. Came together quick. A nice little treat for the kids when they get home from school today. Rolled them in red sanding sugar to be a little festive for the holiday. Will definitely make again!
Yay! I’m so thrilled you enjoyed these cookies.
These are the most well balanced soft sugar cookies I have ever baked. The recipe is clear and the instructions are so easy to follow.
So glad you love these cookies, David!
These look delicious! I do have a question. If I wanted to make more than 16 cookies, would making them smaller affect how soft and chewer they are? How long would I cook them? Also, if I were to double to recipe, how do I double the egg + egg yolk? Thanks for your help!
Hi Lucy! Making the cookies smaller shouldn’t affect the softness or chewiness, but you would want to reduce the timing. For a medium scoop (size 40), while we haven’t tried this, you’ll want to reduce the timing by 2-3 minutes. A small scoop (size 60) would be even less. Just keep a close eye on the cookies and follow the sensory indications, taking them out when the cookies have set and have begun to brown.
To double the recipe, you would double all ingredients exact, so 2 large eggs + 2 egg yolks. I hope that helps! Let us know what you think of this recipe 🙂
I’m excited to make these tomorrow for the first time with my son, i was just wondering if you or anyone had a recipe for an icing that hardens that is great on a sugar cookie .. i’m learning to bake
I hope you love these cookies! Check out my easy cookie icing recipe here: https://handletheheat.com/easy-cookie-icing/
They were good but I wish the recipe had stated “room temperature” next to the eggs. I know you usually use room temp eggs but I second guessed myself since butter was listed as cool room temp, and eggs were not.
Are these good without frosting or is it best to frost them?
These cookies are great with or without frosting! I love them both ways. Check out my frosting recommendations in the pink tip box in this post!
Very soft and delicious sugar cookie!
So glad you loved these cookies!
These cookies are perfectly soft on the inside and crispy on the outside; the key is to take them out when the middle is still soft and the edges are a tan color—they bake for the 5 minutes on the pan once out! I loved the butter tip—I swear that’s why these tasted so buttery; I had my butter very cold. I have this recipe in my cookie cookbook and remember baking them with my mom when Tessa did her zoom baking class to everyone who pre-ordered her cookbook. The way Tessa loves to bake, and genuinely cares that others 1) bake well and 2) enjoy it like she does really inspires me and makes me enjoy the process a whole lot more. Literally everything I have baked from Tessa’s recipes have turned out amazing, and I never fail to have full confidence in her recipes when I start baking, knowing that the final product will be exquisite. I was a college athlete, so sweets were pretty sparse for me, but Tessa really made me enjoy baking and find a love for sweet and all things chocolate and carbs.
This recipe is a 5/5! This is the second time I’ve made it, and the first time was good, but I was able to perfect the crispy edges and soft middle part of the cookie, and it tastes super buttery—the part about cool butter really makes a difference I believe! I have this recipe in my cookie cookbook and remember baking them with my mom when Tessa did her zoom baking class to everyone who pre-ordered her cookbook. The way Tessa loves to bake, and genuinely cares that others 1) bake well and 2) enjoy it like she does really inspires me and makes me enjoy the process a whole lot more. Literally everything I have baked from Tessa’s recipes have turned out amazing, and I never fail to have full confidence in her recipes when I start baking, knowing that the final product will be exquisite. I was a college athlete, so sweet we’re pretty sparse for me, but Tessa really made me enjoy baking and find a love for sweet and all things chocolate and carbs.
*sweets were
Wow, thank you so much for the incredibly kind words, Madeline! We’re so, so thrilled to hear how much you love these cookies as well as baking just as much as we do here at HTH 🙂