Foolproof Sugar Cookies

 

Have you ever been super excited to bake some Pintrest-perfect sugar cookies, but then it all goes sideways somehow? Friends, I have felt that pain.  So. Many. Times. All those good intentions for the cookie that all the other classroom parents will ooh and ahh over, or that you will become workplace famous for, straight out the window. It looks so easy, right? So why is it so hard?

You have to start with the right cookie. One that doesn’t get puffy, or lose its nice edges, or burn in the corners… that cookie. I searched for that cookie like Indiana Jones searched for the Holy Grail. It may have taken me three decades, but I finally found it. And now I can share it with you- no archaeology adventures required! Although, honestly, I feel like it does belong in a museum. Nerd joke. Sorry. Getting back on track now.

The perfect cookie. If I can do it, you can do it. It doesn’t take much, just 20 minutes.

Let’s get this show on the road.

 

Foolproof Sugar Cookies

3½ cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup granulated sugar
2 sticks (1 cup) cold, cubed butter
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract
1 egg

(Click here for a quick, printable version of this recipe and instructions)

That’s it. That’s all. Let’s go through it step-by-step, with photos. Afterwards we can talk about our feelings, if that’s your thing.

Start with your flour and baking powder. Mix 3 cups of flour with the baking powder, and keep the ½ cup of flour for later. You can put this all out of your way for a bit.

Next, cream together your cold butter cubes with your sugar. You can use unsalted butter if you must, but I much prefer the taste of the cookie when I use salted butter. Combine this well, even though cold butter can be a hassle to incorporate. It’ll be worth it, I promise.

 

Go ahead and get crazy and throw in your egg and your extracts and mix it like you know what you’re doing. Because you do know what you’re doing. You’re making the best sugar cookie of your life, you crazy kid. It’ll look like a nice, squishy, and uniform lump when you’ve mixed it enough.

Go ahead and add in your flour/baking powder mixture that you made when we first started on this adventure. Don’t get crazy and dump it all in there at once, split it into two or three parts and mix in between, so you don’t get flour everywhere. Once it’s all mixed in, your dough will look like this, crumbly. Use your hands to press it together into a firm ball.

Drop that lump onto a very well-floured surface. Sprinkle more flour on top of the dough before you roll it out. It’s awful when you’ve cut a million shapes and then you discover that they are all stuck to your rolling surface. If you feel like your dough is going to stick, cut your losses, ball it back up, and re-flour the surface before you get to any cookie cutting.

And now for the fun part. You want to roll your dough out to about a 1/4″ to 3/8″ thick sheet and then get cutting! Anything thinner than that will lose it’s shape when you lift it, or may not support the weight of decoration on top of it. Lay out your shapes on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Parchment paper, you got it? No tinfoil allowed.

Here’s one more shot of about how thick you want your cookie to be, if you’re more of a visual learner!

Now a bit of a trick. While your oven preheats to 350, throw your sheet of cookie shapes into the fridge. Leave them there for at least ten minutes, but you’d be fine with up to an hour if you need to go take a break from all the fun you’ve been having. Once you’re ready, put those suckers in the oven and set your timer for nine minutes. You may need a minute or two more than that, but check them at nine minutes. You want the edges to be juuuuuust barely golden.  After you pull the baking sheet out,  let the cookies sit for a minute or two before you remove them to a baking tray.

And congratulations! You’ve done it. You’ve made the best sugar cookies you’ll ever make. It wasn’t as hard as you thought, was it?

 

Quick Print Version.