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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.
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.
Absolutely amazing cookies, A great recipe, and the cookies turned out so well too, just like your photos. Definitely a recipe to repeat.
I tested versions with cream cheese, but found they became too claggy. I also tested smaller sized cookies, but found they didn’t stay as soft and chewy in the center.
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.
Recipe Ingredients
All-purpose flour – Make sure to weigh your flour accurately. This is KEY. 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! I prefer the taste of sea salt over table salt, but you can use that too. Don’t use kosher salt, it won’t dissolve as readily and you might end up with salty pockets.
Unsalted butter – It’s important that your butter is at a cool room temperature (around 67°F), otherwise your cookies may spread. If using salted butter, reduce the salt added to 1/4 teaspoon.
Granulated sugar – The star ingredient! Don’t reduce the sugar – find out why here and peek the Sprinkle of Science section 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. Feel free to experiment with other extracts!
How to Make Sugar Cookies (Step-by-Step)
Cream butter & sugar. Use butter at a cool room temperature (about 67°F) and beat with the paddle attachment (not the whisk) until lighter in color and larger in volume.
Add egg, egg yolk, and vanilla. Room temperature eggs will incorporate more easily. Beat very well until thoroughly combined, scraping down the sides & bottom of bowl and paddle as needed.
Add dry ingredients. Don’t overmix, this will create stronger gluten networks and may result in tough cookies.
Scoop into balls. A spring-loaded scoop makes quick and efficient work of this.
Roll in sugar. Don’t skip this step, it’s key to those crackly, sparkly tops! Only skip if you plan to frost the cookies.
Flatten slightly. Gently press down each cookie dough scoop with the bottom of a measuring cup or your palm. This ensures proper spread.
Bake. At 350°F for just 10-12 minutes. Don’t overbake! The cookies should be set at the edges but look just slightly ‘wet’ on top. They’ll continue cooking from the heat of the pan.
Let cool. For the chewiest texture and best flavor, allow the cookies to cool completely before enjoying.
Keys to SOFT Cookies
- Do not over-measure your flour. For best results, use a kitchen scale (I promise you this is a game-changer). If you don’t have one, use the spoon-and-level method. Too much flour is the #1 cause of dry crumbly cookies that don’t spread properly.
- 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.
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.
Sprinkle of Science (open me!)
If your cookies spread too much, it may be the temperature of your butter. Many home bakers allow their butter to get too warm, soft, and even greasy before creaming. This leads to excess spreading, which can even can occur even after you’ve chilled the cookie dough! Butter is an emulsion of water and fat and once it breaks by getting too warm, it can wreak havoc. Learn more about butter temperatures on my Instagram here!
In experimenting with sugar ratios for this recipe, I found that reducing the sugar led to cookies that didn’t spread and were dry, crumbly, bland, and staled much faster. Adding too much extra sugar led to cookies that over-spread and were overly sweet.
Learn more about the science of sugar in baking here.
For cookies that stay soft but develop enough flavor, 350°F proved the best baking temperature in my testing. Any hotter, and the cookies became too crisp and hard. Any cooler, and the cookies had underdeveloped flavor and were more delicate. Not all ovens are accurate, so check yours with an oven thermometer to make sure!
Storage & Make ahead
How to Store to Keep Cookies Soft: Store 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.
Freeze: Freeze the uncoated, pre-portioned balls of cookie dough in a freezer-safe container, tightly wrapped in plastic wrap, or in a Ziploc bag up to 6 weeks. Allow them to thaw overnight in the fridge or for 30-60 minutes at room temperature for best results, then bake as directed below.
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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, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Avoid dark-colored baking sheets, which may cause too much browning.
- 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, about 3 minutes. The mixture should increase in volume and become paler in color.
- 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 until just combined. Don't overmix.
- 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 edges are set and very lightly brown, but the centers still look soft or 'wet'. Do not wait for the centers to brown unless you want a crisper texture.
- 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.
Notes
Frequently Asked Questions
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, reduce the amount of added salt in the recipe 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).
I don’t have a digital scale but I do have just a regular scale similar to this one.
Can I use this one or would it just be better to use the other method you mentioned using a knife?
Hi Valerie! I cannot speak to the accuracy of your scale, having never used anything similar, so unless you can test its accuracy to verify it works well, I would recommend the ‘spoon and level’ method Tessa talks about in this article. I hope that helps! Let us know what you think of these cookies once you have given them a try 🙂
Horrible! Followed instructions to a T and it came out a runny mess! Couldn’t make a ball from it if ya tried!
Hi Cassie! I’m sorry to hear that these cookies didn’t turn out as they should for you. The dough should be a nice soft cookie dough, easily scoopable into round balls, and super delicious! Without having baked alongside you, it’s tough to say what went wrong here – but here are a few common things that may have occurred:
– Were any ingredients substituted, reduced, removed, or accidentally forgotten? Every ingredient in a baking recipe is there for a reason, and many ingredients need the perfect balance to chemically react with one another, to form the perfect bake. That’s why reducing sugar, using a different type of flour, skipping leavening agents, etc can have a big impact – and why ensuring you measure accurately as so important. Even seemingly small changes can mess with a recipe’s chemistry, resulting in cookie issues.
– 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 and throw off the chemistry of the recipe. Check out Tessa’s article here, where she talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time.
– Another thing could be how long you creamed your butter and sugars together for, and how warm your butter was at this time. Both have a huge impact on a cookie’s outcome. Have a look at this article, where Tessa discusses both and the repercussions on the resulting baked goods.
– 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 rise properly, fall after baking, and much more. Baking powder/soda can also lose their effectiveness long before the expiration date on the packaging. Tessa talks about the science behind leavening agents, and how to test for leavener freshness, in this article here!
I hope something here helps, and I hope you’ll give these cookies another try – they really are incredibly delicious!! Happy baking 🙂
These are now a family favorite! Even my daughter who is NOT a sugar cookie fan loved them! The tiniest bite of salt seemed to be a big part of the love. I followed the recipe exactly. No complaints- except that they are hard to keep around for very long! A total win.
Thanks for recipe. Works perfect and cookies are delicious even when I add 3 spoon of lemon green tea which I blend up with some of sugar.
I’ve made this recipe about 5 times and it’s been great. Make sure to flatten out the cookies before baking and measure your flour with a scale.
I also love to coat them with cinnamon sugar. (:
I made these for the kids and they were a big hit. The only problem was that I couldn’t eat them because I have to eat gluten-free. Can these cookies be made using gluten free flour?
Hi Esther! We don’t typically bake with gluten-free ingredients, so we can’t say for sure! Let us know how it goes if you give that a try 🙂
The recipe is amazing, although me and my friends found them a little dry, and decided that they could use more butter. Other than that, they tasted great!
I am wondering if it is possible to make these cookies without an electric mixer?? Will they turn out the same if I melt the butter / make it a bit softer so that I can cream it manually? thanks in advance:)
Hi Mirabel! Unfortunately, both the creaming process and the cooler temperature of the butter are crucial in making this cookie recipe. Learn more about both here! I recommend instead making recipes designed to use melted butter, such as Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies or Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies or Soft Batch Double Chocolate Chip Cookies. Let us know if you give any of these cookies a try 🙂
I made these by hand & they turned out fine! Put the butter in the microwave for 10 seconds. Use your hands too! Super great recipe.
I was wondering if you could put maraschino chopped cherries in this recipe and use the juice of the cherries instead of vanilla?
Hi Linda! We haven’t tried that, and it should work okay – just be sure that your cherries are very, very thoroughly dried before adding them to your dough, to prevent adding too much excess moisture to the dough. Feel free to experiment with adding a little juice in place of the vanilla, but we think the vanilla brings such a wonderful flavor that I’d hesitate to remove it entirely. Let us know how it goes! 🙂
Hadn’t made sugar cookies in a long time— these are exactly what I loved and missed!
This recipe was amazing! I saw someone asking if you can roll out the dough and make shapes etc. I just want to say YES you can! I rolled out the dough (yes it will stick a little but dust a tiny bit of flour on top and it’ll be fine). Refrigerate this rolled out dough and when chilled cut into shapes. Repeat with left over dough.
These cookies did not turn out good for me. I had to add milk to thin out the dough. The first batch was very fluffy
Hi there! I’m sorry to hear that these cookies didn’t turn out as they should. The texture you describe sounds like you may have accidentally added too much flour. 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 – resulting in overly puffy, dry, dense or even hard cookies, without much flavor. Check out Tessa’s article here, where she talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time. I hope that helps! Happy baking 🙂