Soft and Chewy Cut Out Sugar Cookies

Everyone needs a good sugar cookie recipe in their back pocket. If your ideal sugar cookie is chewy and soft, flavorful but not too sweet, holds it’s shape, and is easy to work with, keep reading because this recipe is for you! There are two key ingredients that in my opinion, make all the difference in this recipe.

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I’ve been working on this recipe on and off for over a year now, making tweak after tweak to find balance between taste, texture, and workability. I feel as if a thank you is in order to all the family and friends that have been faithful taste testers and feedback givers!

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So let’s get started. Today we’re going to go over some sugar cookie basics to give you the best chance possible of getting a delicious batch.

First, whisk your flour, salt, and cornstarch together in a medium size bowl and set aside for later. Shout out to John from Preppy Kitchen for introducing me to the idea of adding cornstarch to sugar cookies! This is one of the “key ingredients” I mentioned earlier. Adding cornstarch makes a huge difference in the spread, and workability of the dough!

Now, let’s talk ingredient temperatures. One of the key parts of this recipe being easy to work with right off the bat (chill time is optional, but we’ll discuss that more later) is making sure your ingredients aren’t too warm. Warm dough equals softer dough, AND can lead to more spread in the oven

You’ll want your butter to be BARELY softer than fridge temp. If you press your finger in to it, you want it to give a little but still be fairly firm. A quick way to reach this consistency is to take your chilled butter from the fridge and pop it in the microwave for 10 seconds.

Mix your butter in the bowl of an electric mixer just until it begins to evenly spread around the sides as shown in the photo below. This is where you’ll need to add your cold cream cheese, and then beat until combined. Don’t go overboard on this, but do make sure they’ve fully incorporated by scraping down the bowl and beater as needed along the way.

Also, one more shout out to the first bakery I had the privilege of working in (Frosted in Walla Walla, WA) for introducing me to the idea of cream cheese in sugar cookies! The tang it adds is DELICIOUS and it helps them to stay tender and soft.

Next, add in your sugar and beat until incorporated. Once again, we’re not looking to add a ton of air by beating for long periods of time. Excess air in a dough can also lead to spreading.

Add in the egg and yolk, along with the vanilla and almond extracts and mix to combine.

Scraping down your bowl frequently will help ingredients evenly incorporate more quickly, lessening your chances of overworking your dough! I really like this stiffer silicone spatula for making cookie dough that I’ll link below.

Tovolo Flex-Core Wood Handled Silicone Spatula Non-Stick, Heat-Resistant, BPA-Free, Dishwasher-Safe with Removable Angled Head, 1 EA, White

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With your mixer on low, slowly add in the flour mixture. Keep an eye on it so you can turn it off when you see there are no more dry ingredient streaks remaining. Give the bowl and beater a thorough scrape to ensure there are no wet ingredients remaining. Evenly mixed dough increases the consistency of your cookies from the first one you roll out, to the last!

Now here’s where you get to choose your own adventure. A hot topic in the world of sugar cookies is chill time. I did a poll on Instagram to hear what people prefer when it comes to having to chill sugar cookies, and the vast majority of bakers were totally fine with it if it meant better cookies in the end!

I ran tests to measure how much the cookies would spread with no chill time, two hours of chill time, and two hours chill PLUS ten minutes of chilling after cutting out the shapes, and here’s the verdict.

Based on the information above, you can decide which chilling route you’d like to take! Something I will add as a benefit to chilling your dough, is that you need less flour to roll it out, and it’s even EASIER to work with and pop out of your cookie cutters. I used snowflakes which can be tricky sometimes, but with the chilled dough it popped right out! My preferred method is to chill my dough in two saran wrapped one inch thick discs or squares for two hours before rolling, cutting, and baking!

Also, I can’t recommend a rolling pin with guide rings enough. This bad boy makes quick and consistent work of rolling out any kind of dough. I prefer to roll sugar cookies out at 3/8 of an inch so they stay thick and chewy. I’ll throw a link down below!

Joseph Joseph PrecisionPin Baking Adjustable Rolling Pin – Consistent and Even Dough Thickness for Perfect Baking Results, Sky, 16.54″

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When rolling out your dough, your goal should be to handle it the least amount possible. The more you work your dough, the more it is likely to spread. Get as many shapes as you can out of each roll out! Something I like to do is take the scraps from my first roll out, and then wrap them back up and pop them back in the fridge while I roll out the second disc of dough. Then, I combine the scraps of the first and second roll out to complete the third roll out and go from there until all the dough has been used.

I also would recommend picking your dough up every several rolls and swiping over the counter and backside of the dough to make sure you have an adequate amount of flour to reduce sticking! If you roll your dough out all at once, you might get to the end and realize your dough is stuck to your counter making your shapes a bit more difficult to remove.

You can always use a small offset spatula to move your cookie shapes from the counter to your trays to avoid pinching or bumping the dough!

As you go, you can dip your cookie cutter in a bowl of flour to make the dough release even more easily.

Now that you have your dough rolled and cut, you may be asking, what is the best surface to bake sugar cookies on? I will pass along a recommendation to use either parchment paper, or a silicone mat. Avoid anything greased or non stick, because that can lead to extra spreading. With how well this recipe holds it’s shape, you can really pack a lot onto one tray (just don’t go any close than 1″ apart)!

P.S. I was a parchment paper girl for years but lately I’ve been loving the silicone mat! Here’s a link to the one I use.

Silpat Premium Non-Stick Silicone Baking Mat, Half Sheet Size, 11-5/8 x 16-1/2, Orange

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Bake your cookies at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 12-15 minutes, or until cookies are no longer shiny on top. I look for the sheen to go from shiny, to an even eggshell finish. Making sure you don’t over-bake your cookies is a key step in having a moist result that isn’t dried out! I shoot to have no brown edges/bottoms on my cookies.

So before we get into buttercream and decorating, let’s summarize some of the basics we’ve gone over today!

Sugar Cookie Tips Summary

• Use cold ingredients to make the dough
• Avoid over mixing
• Scrape down the bowl often
• Chill dough for two hours to achieve the best workability and the least amount of spreading
• Handle dough/re-roll as few times as possible
• Use a rolling pin with guide rings for consistent dough thickness
• Dip cookie cutter in flour as you go to help the dough release more easily
• Bake cookies on a silicone mat or parchment paper
• Bake cookies for 12-15 minutes, until the sheen of the tops has changed from shiny, to an even eggshell/matte finish. Avoid over baking and do not brown edges/bottoms. Rotate your baking sheet halfway through the bake time.
• Allow cookies to cool completely before frosting

Vanilla Almond Sugar Cookie Buttercream

Allow the cookies to cool before frosting. I’ve included my go to Vanilla Almond Sugar Cookie Buttercream that has one more unexpected ingredient that creates the dreamiest flavor! It’s also not overly sweet like a lot of American buttercreams can be so you won’t feel like you have to skimp on the frosting to avoid a toothache.

Unlike the cookie dough, you DO want to beat the butter until light and fluffy for longer periods of time. It makes a big difference in the density and sweetness of your buttercream! Then once you’ve added your extracts, powdered sugar, salt, and then beat it until the whole mixture is light and fluffy, we can move along to my favorite addition.

Say hello to my last key ingredient, French Vanilla Coffee Creamer! You could totally sub this for heavy cream if you’d like to and just compensate with extra vanilla and almond extract to taste, but honestly, you should definitely give the french vanilla a chance! P.S. the salt in the buttercream is important to give balance to the sweetness, so don’t skip it!

I really wanted this buttercream to be creamy and delicious, so I increased the amount of butter I usually add to a buttercream. It does create an “off white” frosting, but I think the flavor and texture is worth it. If you’d like to reduce the yellow coloring a smidge, you can add a TINY tiny amount of purple food coloring which will tip the color to a cooler shade. Go small on this though because you can always put more in, but you can’t take it back out!

To smooth out air bubbles in your buttercream, I recommend running the mixer on low for at least 5 minutes to work out more of the air pockets.