How to Make Perfect Sugar Cookies
Indulge in the timeless delight of my sugar cookie recipe, a perfect blend of simplicity and sweetness that captures the essence of home-baked goodness. These sugar cookies are a testament to classic baking, combining just the right amount of buttery richness with a hint of vanilla to create a tender, melt-in-your-mouth texture.
Ideal for any occasion, from festive holiday gatherings to casual afternoon snacks, these cookies are versatile and easy to make. Their crisp edges and soft centers appeal to both young and old alike. Whether you’re a novice baker or a seasoned pro, this recipe ensures consistent, delicious results every time.
Enjoy them plain, or add your personal touch with colorful sprinkles, icing, or a dash of cinnamon. Embrace the joy of baking and sharing these delightful sugar cookies with family and friends.
What Is a Sugar Cookie?
A sugar cookie is a classic for its simplicity and delightful sweetness. Typically made from a basic dough of flour, butter, sugar, and eggs, sugar cookies often include vanilla or almond extract to enhance their flavor. The hallmark of a good sugar cookie lies in its delicate balance between a slightly crisp edge and a soft, chewy center. The dough is usually rolled out and cut into shapes using cookie cutters, making sugar cookies a favorite for festive occasions and holidays. They are often decorated with colorful sprinkles, sugar crystals, or various icing designs, allowing endless creative possibilities. This versatility, from the dough to the decorations, makes them a popular choice for home bakers and professional pastry chefs, inspiring a world of unique and beautiful creations. Sugar cookies have a long history, dating back to the 1700s in the United States. They were initially known as Nazareth Sugar Cookies, named after the Pennsylvania town where German Protestant settlers first created them. Over the centuries, the recipe has evolved, but the essential characteristics of the sugar cookie have remained the same: a buttery, sweet flavor and a tender crumb. People of all ages and cultures believe sugar cookies are ideal for any occasion. Whether enjoyed plain or elaborately decorated, they embody homemade treats’ comforting, nostalgic essence. Their universal appeal brings people together, creating shared moments of joy and connection.
Sugar Cookie Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- ½ cup oil
- 1 cup butter
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 4 cup flour
Instructions
- Bake at 325° F in a convection oven.
Notes
Chef Jennifer Field’s Recommendations
“What immediately jumps out at me is the refrigeration time for the second batch of cookies. I see that your leavener was baking soda. Baking soda in a baked good only has one chemical reaction: it fizzes and bubbles when wet. This, of course, happened when you first mixed your ingredients together. Since you baked your first batch immediately, the soda did its job correctly.
The chemical reaction ceased as your dough for the second batch chilled in the fridge. Your rise was probably uneven because you beat more air into the dough (you said your mixing time was longer the second time), so even though the soda had fizzled by the time you baked, you still had lots of little air bubbles that were probably not evenly distributed in your dough, causing a wonky rise.
The recipe called for one teaspoon each of soda and cream of tartar. It sounds like an old recipe. Try substituting double-acting baking powder next time. The double-acting powder has two chemical reactions: one when it gets wet and a second when it gets hot. So, even if you let your dough hang out in the fridge and lose the first reaction over time, you’ll still get a reasonably even second-leavening boost when you put your dough in the oven.
Since you’re also interested in your cookie holding a fairly detailed shape after baking, I suggest shortening instead of oil. Oil is a liquid at room temperature and when heated, cookies tend to spread a bit. Shortening, being a solid at room temperature and a relatively slow melter, will yield a cookie with less spread.
I hope this helped! Good luck with your baking.
Chef Jenni Field
Pastry Sous Chef
P.S. Your idea of a perfect sugar cookie made me drool. Just a little. :-)”
Me too! – RG
20 Responses
I’m so excited to get this info. I will try it out right away. Perhaps I should stop baking cookies and go into the business of writing the captions under the food pictures! 🙂
Thanks again
Kathy,
Hope my tips were helpful, and I really hope your cookies turn out exactly the way you want them to! And keep writing those captions, lady!
Couple of comments from an ‘amateur’ -first, any time I bake I first do all the ‘wet’, then add the ‘dry.’ For this recipe, I would cream the shortening and the sugars, add the vanilla, etc to the eggs and beat them lightly, then fold into the creamed sugars. Flour and etc I would sift together, then fold slowly into the wet mixture.
And secondly, I have ‘better’ – at least to my taste – recipe for a soft sugar cookie. I do not know the rules here for sharing recipes but if allowed I would be glad to share with you.
Best regards, and
Bon appétit!
Ted
im so happy you put this inormation on the web i wil try it out right away you should make a poem about this.
Hi Ted, I would love to see your recipe for soft sugar cookie. Look forward to trying it.
RG
Ted,
I would love to try your soft sugar cookie receipe. I browsed the forum briefly and didn’t see it. Could you point me in the right direction?
Thanks!
C
Thanks for the requests for the cracked sugar cookies. I sincerely hope everyone enjoys this old recipe.
Best regards,
Ted
————
Cracked Sugar Cookies
1 1/4 CP sugar
1 CP unsalted butter, softened
(or use half butter, half margarine)
3 large eggyolks, slightly beaten
1 TSP. vanilla
2 1/2 CP sifted all-purpose flour
1 TSP. baking soda
1/2 TSP. cream of tartar
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease two cookie sheets.
Cream sugar and butter together until light. Beat in yolks and vanilla. Sift together the measured, sifted flour, baking soda and cream of tartar, then fold into the batter sugar mixture.
Form dough into walnut sized balls and place about two inches apart on the cookie sheets. Do not flatten. Bake for about eleven minutes, until tops are cracked and the tops are just turning colors. Cool on wire rack.
Yield: about 48 cookies.
Thats alot of flour, isnt it? 4cups!!!!!!!! I’
m making it right now, and its reallly crumbly! not sure if thats good or bad!
I’m trying that recipe for first time too. I mixed everything else good and added flour last.. and dough it turned out great.. have in fridge For little while so can roll out and cut out..
to avoid issues with measuring flour by volume, I generally consider “1 cup” of flour to equal 4 ounces. In the original recipe calling for 4 cups of flour, I would use a pound. 1 cup of creamed butter + 1/2 cup of oil + 2 eggs should give you a dough with a good consistency. If you don’t measure your flour by weight, it is possible that you might have 4-5 more ounces of flour than you need.
wow this recipe was great i am using it at my holiday parties thanks so much!
hi!!!
i was joyed when i saw this recipe
i wanted to make a dessert for christmas 2008 but i had no clue what i was going to do
forsure im trying the sugar cookies
thank you! 🙂
soon to be pastry chief ,
stephanie
great recipe..my kids just love-em!..
I LOVE THEMMM
Great receipe. I made them twice so far. Thanks.
The only sugar cookies I ever loved were the ones from our school lunchroom. They were thick and crumbly. The taste was out of this world. Any idea how to make these?
Hi Kelly, that may be difficult. There are a lot of schools out there and I’m guessing as many recipes for their cookies.
This recipe is just what i was looking for!
I’m from japan and I always thought most of cookies i had was kind of soft. I like that kind,too ,but i really want to make nice crisp sugar cookie! In the recipe, oil means vegetable oil? If I’m using shortening instead of oil what is the measurement ?
if you could give me answers for those question that will be great!
Thanks!
Hi, Sachiko. To make a nice, crisp cookie, I suggest you use all butter rather than oil or shortening. You are correct that “oil” means vegetable oil in this case.
If you’re not worried about spreading, butter is definitely the way to go to get a nice crisp cookie.
Just cream in 12 oz (3 sticks, US) of softened-but-still-cool butter with the sugars at the beginning of the recipe and then go from there, leaving out the oil entirely.
Hope this helps:)
Jenni
I made this recipe just now and I am so disappointed with the turn out. I tried to find a similar recipe to the one I had made in the past and did not succeed with this batch. Hope you all enjoy this recipe-not to my taste
Hi Marianne, sorry you didn’t enjoy the recipe. If you find one you like and works for you, send it along. – RG