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.
I only had salted butter. I should have cut the salt back a little. It was too much. Otherwise they were perfect. I used a regular sized cookie scoop. I do not have a large one. They took 11 minutes in my oven.
I made this recipe with organic ingredients, I didn’t have enough churned butter, so I used KerryGold unsalted. I don’t have the blender paddle, I couldn’t get the butter and sugar to become “fluffy “, so I added the eggs into it, as suggested, with Cook’s powdered vanilla and blended that, once I blended it, put it into the dry ingredients, organic unbleached Red Mill’s flour, Red Mills baking powder without aluminum and Real Salt. It was so thick and dry I couldn’t get it to blend, so, I used my hands and it finally blended. Added macadamia nuts. It made more than 12 cookies, 16 total, but I didn’t measure the balls precisely. The cookies didn’t come out looking as pretty as your pictures but they looked good and taste great. It took a little longer for them to bake because I used my chicken’s organic eggs – not those nasty store things. I had too much sugar I threw out from the 1/4 cup set aside for rolling, but overall, great recipe. I didn’t use poisonous substitutions like crisco, but half lard and half butter would be a great idea, I think. It’s a whole lot of butter. And I was happy to find this recipe without the toxic dye on top of the cookies. I think the friends I made them for will enjoy them. Thank you for your recipe. I don’t have social media to post too.
I’ve made these 2 years in a row and they’re the best! A definite in the Christmas baking lineup now😁😋
I wasn’t able to take a picture before my dog ate the rest of the batch but these were the best sugar cookies I’ve ever had! They tasted really good chilled and warm, but apparently leaving them in the freezer for too long saps the moisture out of the cookies. They were also huge cookies too, and I measured each ball exactly. Not complaining though! 10 out of 10 recipe, I’ve been recommending it to my friends.
My husband said they were the best cookies I’ve ever made! I need to bake another batch 😂.
These were more than a little heavy for me, so I substituted half of the butter with Crisco and they turned into these wonderfully light yummy bites of goodness.
I made these for the first time today. they were amazing! Soft and chewy. I added extra green and red sugar on top cause they are for Christmas. My sugar cookie recipe I do every year is for the harder crunchy type cookies which we love, but I wanted to make both this year. Thank you!!!!
I’ve made this recipe 3 times now, each batch turned out great! The cookies are soft, thick, the hint of sea salt is delicious. I’m a novice baker, so I was shocked when these cookies turned out so delicious! For one of the recipes I used ‘I can’t believe it’s not butter’ instead of unsalted butter. When I did this, I had to add about 1/2 cup of flour to thicken the dough, but it still turned out great.
Personally I HATED the cookies… they where dry, tasteles, and tatsed sugerless. I am very diapointed, I made them for my familys christmas bake off, and lost. The juges practiclly spit the cookies out! Very un-satisfied! 😒😢😭😭😭
Calm down
That probably is telling you to stay out of the kitchen if you can’t make this simple delicious recipe, LOL!
I guess you can’t bake. My husband and I thought they were amazing. I also use high end baking ingredients. I froze the balls for 2 days and I skipped the extra sugar on the outside because I don’t like sugar coated cookies. I weigh everything in grams and weighed each ball. I defrosted them nearly all the way and baked. The only thing is I don’t think they need to be 3 Tbsps in size. I’d do 2 Tbsps next time.
As a former chef you and your husband aren’t good critics
Going to guess you’re a child since you can’t spell. If you can’t spell you probably can’t bake. Leaving comments like this is so rude to the baker.
They was good for me not sure where you went wrong
Can I use this recipe to make a cookie cake?
Thank you for sharing this recipe, I can’t wait to make them! I want to give them as gifts so I thought I would make them assorted and add ground nuts to some of them. I was wondering if you would suggest either adding the additional egg white or reducing the flour to compensate for the ground nuts? I plan on using about a half a cup of ground nuts.
Can I refrigerat the dough and roll it out so the kids can cut them?
No. Says in recipe drop cookies.
I use this recipe for cutter cookies and they turned out great! Definitely have to chill in a disk, wrapped in plastic wrap for 20min. Should be 1/4-1/2″ thick, the thicker the cookie the softer it’ll be. Bake time is pretty much the same.