Meet Your New Go-To Sugar Cookie Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How do you make sugar cookies taste better? ›

A teaspoon or two of extracts will noticeably boost flavor when blended into your sugar cookie mix. Vanilla is the obvious choice. For a more intriguing flavor, add both vanilla and almond extracts. Rum, maple and anise are other delicious varieties to consider.

My tall cookie trick.

Roll your cookie dough into tall balls instead of perfectly round spheres. Taller balls of cookie dough ensure thicker cookies.

Sugar sweetens the cookies and makes them an enticing golden brown. Adding too little sugar can affect the taste and texture of cookies. Adding too much can cause them to be brittle. Take your time creaming the sugar and butter together at the beginning.

Baking cookies quickly in a hot oven – at 375 degrees F as opposed to a lower temperature – will make for soft results. They'll bake fast instead of sitting and drying out in the oven's hot air. Ever so slightly underbaking your cookies will give you softer results than cooking them the full amount the recipe says.

Without chilling, these cookie cutter sugar cookies won't hold their shape. Chill the rolled out cookie dough for at least 1-2 hours and up to 2 days. Cut into shapes.

A low proportion of sugar relative to flour reduces spread, keeping the cookies thick. A high proportion of mix-ins helps thicken the dough. Blending chocolate chip styles creates a more dynamic flavor. Overnight refrigeration hydrates the flour, again helping the cookies stay thick.

Baking Powder. The type of leavening you use in your cookies doesn't just help them rise while baking, it affects their texture and structure too. Baking soda in cookies yields a denser cookie with craggy tops, while baking powder causes cookies to rise higher during baking for a cakier texture.

Can I refrigerate cookie dough with baking soda? ›

We found that the dough with baking soda held well for two days, but was a little flatter on the third. Cookies with both baking powder and soda began to lose lift after four days. Baking powder–leavened cookie dough maintained good lift all week. The unleavened cookies held well all week.

Chilling the dough is a key step in making sugar cookies, especially when you're making cut-outs. Even if you're tight on time, make sure to get the dough in the fridge, or even the freezer, even if it's only for a little while. Skip this step, and the dough will be sticky, and much harder to work with.

Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.

The higher the proportion of butter to other ingredients, the more tender your cookie will be (and consequently, the more it will spread as it bakes). I found that a ratio of 1 part flour to 1 part sugar to 0.8 parts butter was about right for a cookie that has moderate spread and doesn't end up cakey.

you can add extracts. for example peppermint or almond or you can add chocolate chips or dried fruit. Every time I make sugar cookies, regardless of the recipe, the dough always turns out way too crumbly to roll into a ball. I always end up adding a lot more butter than is called for.

Can I flavour these cookies? Yes! Instead of vanilla, you can add another extract like almond, rose water or orange. You can also add some fresh lemon, lime or orange zest to the cookie dough.

Add more complex proteins, like malted milk powder and brown butter. Caramelizing the sugar beforehand brings bright notes to your cookies, but you can further expand your dessert's flavor profile by playing with proteins.

The ingredients you used could be the culprit – using different sugars, melted butter, baking powder or baking soda can alter a cookie's texture and taste.