Best Sugar Cookie Recipe EVER
This is the BEST sugar cookie recipe– no chilling the dough, cookies keep their shape when baked, soft and flavorful, perfect for decorating.
Every year millions of people print this Best Sugar Cookie Recipe EVER from In Katrina’s Kitchen. I have been using this recipe for over 25 years, and it has never failed me.
The texture is medium-soft, but you can bake them longer if you prefer a crisp cookie. This cookie is my absolute favorite, and I have spent many years perfecting it for friends and family.
Why is This the BEST Sugar Cookie Recipe?
The dough comes together quickly with simple pantry ingredients.
It does NOT need to be chilled.
The recipe can be doubled easily.
Cookies hold their shape with very little expanding when baked.
Baked cookies freeze well.
The recipe I am giving you makes a large batch of dough because I like to bake many cookies. Also, I like to roll and cut my cookies fairly thick…to hold a lot of frosting.
Incorporating the last cup of flour may look dry and look crumbly. Turn out the dough onto your countertop and work with wet hands and/or more flour until the dough is smooth and ready to roll.
Most asked Q and A about this Recipe
Butter questions
- It is most important to note that the butter does not have to be at room temperature. We do not recommend rock-hard butter but allow the butter to sit on the countertop for 10-15 minutes while you assemble your ingredients.
- If you can press your finger into the butter and you can easily make a deep indent then the butter is too soft.
- You should be able to press the butter and make a small fingerprint.
- A tip for mixing butter is to cut it into cubes (or just small pats) before creaming with the sugar.
The dough is sticky and/or crumbly. What can I do?
- The final dough really comes together and has a texture close to Play-Doh. Wet your hands if you need to. Turn out the dough onto a floured surface. Don’t be afraid to use more flour and incorporate it in while you are “kneading” it into a smooth ball.
- Forget everything you know about sugar cookie dough. Don’t be afraid of sprinkling more flour as you roll it out. Use the scraps! Mix them back into the unused dough and keep going.
Can I chill the dough? I want to chill the dough. Actually, I need to make these 3 days in advance, is that okay?
- If you need to make the dough in advance, you can chill it. Wrap it tightly with plastic wrap and store it in the refrigerator.
- Bring the dough to room temperature before rolling and cutting. You may need to use more flour on the countertop.
The cookies look under-baked. Can I bake them longer?
- I almost always suggest pulling out these cookies and the 8-9 minute mark for large cookie cutters, and 6-8 minutes for small cookie cutters. They will continue baking on the cookie sheet for a few minutes while they cool and set.
- After cooling for about 5 minutes, I use a spatula to transfer them to a wire rack.
Can I omit the almond extract?
- You can omit the almond extract.
- If not using almond extract, replace it with an equal amount of pure vanilla extract.
- You can use any of your favorite flavorings in this cookie. I have used peppermint, maple, and lemon with great success.
How Do I Make these Cookies Gluten-Free?
- To make these the best gluten-free Sugar Cookie, swap out the flour for your favorite gluten-free 1:1 flour.
- I use King Arthur Flour Measure for Measure Flour
What is your favorite Christmas Cookie Frosting Recipe?
- I’m happy you asked! I like a soft, sweet frosting. Here is my favorite Christmas Cookie Frosting.
- Click here for my Small Batch Royal Icing recipe (it dries smooth and hard and is perfect for holding together gingerbread houses, too!).
- You could also try our Three Ingredient Chocolate Glaze
I hope you love this Best Sugar Cookie recipe as much as our family does! Merry Christmas!
Best Sugar Cookie Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 Cup unsalted butter, 226 grams
- 1 Cup granulated white sugar, 200 grams
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3 cups all purpose flour, 360 grams
Instructions
- PREHEAT oven to 350° F.
- In the bowl of your mixer, CREAM butter and sugar until smooth, at least 3 minutes
- BEAT in extracts and egg. (PLEASE NOTE there is 1 egg in this recipe.)
- In a separate bowl, COMBINE baking powder and salt with flour and add a little at a time to the wet ingredients.
- IMPORTANT NOTE: If the dough looks crumbly keep mixing for 30 seconds to 1 minute longer. The dough should be pulling away from the sides of the mixer.
- If the dough still looks too dry or stiff for your mixer, turn out the dough onto a countertop surface, flour surface as needed. Wet your hands and finish off kneading the dough by hand.
- DO NOT CHILL THE DOUGH. Divide into workable batches (2-3 chunks), roll out onto a floured surface, and cut. You want these cookies to be on the thicker side (closer to 1/4 inch rather than 1/8).
- Bake at 350 for 6-8 minutes. Let cool on the cookie sheet until firm enough to transfer to a cooling rack.
Notes
Nutrition
Troubleshooting Best Sugar Cookie Recipe
Scooping and dumping your flour may be the problem! Even with level scooping measurements can vary. Try getting a digital kitchen scale and adding your ingredients by weight.
If your cookies seem to consistently need a longer or shorter baking time consider calibrating your oven with an oven thermometer.
Bake with a silicone mat or parchment paper.
Invest in a small metal cookie spatula to transfer cookies.
If left on the counter top for about an hour your butter should be the right consistency- a finger pressed onto the butter will make a slight indent but not sink down into it. (Read more about room temperature butter in this post about XL Bakery Style Cookies.)
Whenever a recipe calls for room temperature butter you should use room temperature eggs. To take the chill off of eggs I place them in a shallow bowl of warm (not hot) water for 2-3 minutes. You can then crack them for use in your recipe.
Looking for more Christmas Cookies?
Try my Christmas Cookie archive for some of the most adorable and delicious Christmas cookies.
Some of my favorites are Grinch Cookies and Ugly Christmas Sweater Sugar Cookie Bars.
For something different, try Christmas Tree Meringue Cookies.
2,506 Comments on “Best Sugar Cookie Recipe EVER”
Yes
Your sugar cookie recipe is incredible! Very easy to make and love not having to refrigerate it before using it… they came out so good and stayed soft. Love the cookie icing also, my kids baked, decorated and ate cookies with no icing mess….not sticky what so ever, I couldn’t believe it……will definitely be making these sugar cookies from now on. Thanks for sharing your recipe! 🙂
Thank you thank you. My grand daughter and I made your sugar cookies cut outs. She had a blast and started eating them before they were decorated. They came out perfect. I’ve baked for years but never made cut out cookie. Your resipe was perfect, and love them with the almond extract. Thank you again and Merry Christmas. Mary & Arabella
This is HANDS DOWN the best sugar cookie recipe I’ve ever made. In fact, until I started making these, I just resolved myself to saying I didn’t like sugar cookies. Until I made these. They make the PERFECT cut outs for decorating, everyone loves the texture, the flavor, the perfect shape. If you follow the recipe exactly, you should have no issues. I’ve made these for the past 4 Christmases for my kids to decorate, for cookie exchanges, for Santa, and I’ll never use another one. THANK YOU!
Great cookie. Dough is crumbly but kneads together as instructed. Good flavor. Cookies retain a sharp shape. Will try to cook less to get the soft cookie; afraid to have raw so I tend to overcook. And thanks for the frosting recipe as well.
This was the easiest and best sugar cookie recipe EVER! I did have to bake them longer than Katrina recommends but they came out perfect regardless. I took 1/2 the dough for regular sugar cookies and than divided the remainder of the dough into to 2. I than dyed 1/2 red and the other green for my Christmas cookies. When I tell you I used every bit of the dough for cookies, believe me, there was no dough left. The very last morsel of dough, no bigger than a 50 cent piece, was my taste tester. My cookies were for a Christmas party and were a huge hit. Thank you, Katrina.
I tried this recipe this weekend and it was great, however one side note. Don’t try it with air bake cookie sheets…it takes 3 times as long to get them baked. When I used a regular pan it worked perfectly with the timing provided.
I think you said something about leaving out the salt and the cookies being a bit bland because they would be frosted.
If you don’t plan on frosting them, how might you alter the recipe so they are not bland?
Thank you!
This really is the best recipe! I’ve made a few times now and people RAVE over them. So easy too!
LOOOOOVVVVVEEDDD IT!!! Super easy and came out super yummy, only variation I used was Mexican vanilla instead of regular vanilla and almond extract,Thank you!
This is by far the worst christmas cookie recipe, in facr it is the worst cookie recipe ever. Make them if you want to ruin christmas cookie time with the kids!
Dear “Joe Schmoe,” I would love to have an open dialogue with you about the recipe but it seems like you would rather hide behind your computer screen and throw insults my way. I’m particularly impressed with the time and care you took to create a special email account joeshmoe@*****.com. Truly I hope this is an account you check regularly and a place where you can receive my most sincere happy holiday greetings. Because to me it seems like you need a little Christmas cheer. Be best- Katrina
Thank you so much. My Nana made wonderful Xmas cookies, but we never paid attention to the baking and can’t find her recipe. I attempted cookies with store bought sugar cookie rolls I would cut out into holiday shapes (santa, tree, snowman, etc.,) and store bought frosting, LOL. The cookies always came out in a weird, roundish shape and the icing never hardened. I gave up until today!! I am so excited to try again. My husband begs for these and store bought just won’t do!!! PS.We are in our 70’s
Do you also have a recipe for raisin cookies my Nana also made? These were a round and flat pastry on the bottom, the filling had soft. plump raisins in a brown filling. The top pastry had a small hole. Kind of like a pie with raisin filling. I imagined she cooked the raisins to make the gel and used the special green raisins that are large and soft. Thank you, again
This is an amazing recipe! The dough is easy to handle without being chilled and BONUS…I used 3 tablespoons of aquafaba instead of the egg. My 3 year-old grandson is allergic and I was so afraid that he would eat the dough with raw egg in it. The cookies turned out so flaky and he was able to nibble at the dough without worry on my part. This is going to be my ‘go to’ recipe for cutouts from now on. If you are looking for an eggless sugar cookie cutout recipe, this is it!
Can you use salted butter?
Yes
These cookies were nasty!! Tasted like flour. There was no sweetness to them at all.
Well, this is it. THE best sugar cookie recipe for rollout cookies. Just to experiment, I tried tweaking a little bit–a little extra sugar once, a little less butter a second time, a little less butter and more sugar a third. Forget it. ANY changes to this original recipe are going to cause your cookies to spread in the oven. The recipe listed here is it–follow it!! I DID have success with replacing the egg–using flax seed & warm water in place of the egg (this substitution was actually necessary as we have a friend with an egg allergy); and it did not affect the recipe. Note–my dough is always crumbly in the bowl, and I just dump it on my counter (I don’t even put flour down), then start kneading it and pushing the crumbles together. They begin to meld like playdoh (I am guessing it is the warmth of my hands interacting with the butter in the dough), and I have no issues with it after kneading.
I love this recipe for sugar cookies
I also would like to share frosting ideas
I use candy oil flavor to add a Christmas order by using wild cherry and color it pink, hot cinnamon and color red, anise color it purple, speriment color green, naturine color orange, etc..
I use 1 tsp of flavoring per two cups of frosting.
Each cook has up to five different frosting colors.
Cake like cookie like candy = Fun
I have a sugar cookie recipe we’ve used for years. They tasted great but sometimes the dough was difficult to work with. I’d volunteered to bake some cut-out sugar cookies for our church youth to decorate. I gave this recipe a try and I’m so glad I did! The dough truly reminds me of Play-doh 😉 and was so easy to work with! It re-rolled and re-rolled without ever getting crumbly or yucky. They held their shape, too…My snowflakes were awesome! This will be my new “go-to” cut-out sugar cookie recipe from now on! Thank you so much for sharing!
Just made these! Amazing and delicious. Why did it take so long for me to find this recipe?!? Thank you for sharing. This is my new go-to holiday cookie recipe.
Can you freeze the rolled out cookies before baking, or do you recommend baking them first?
I recommend baking them first.
These are soo good and easy!! Perfect texture, no dough chilling and great flavor.
The almond extract is key!
I love these cookies. I make them every Christmas… I think this will be the 5th year now. The only change I ever make is that sometimes I use lemon extract instead of almond. These are super easy to make and hold their shape perfectly.
That sounds great!
This recipe is awful. Crumbly mess. Could not roll it out at all. Tried to save it with a tiny bit of water but just became a slimy mess. What a disappointment. I’ve made tons of sugar cookies and used many recipies for variety, never had this kind of issue.
Just made this recipe today and they did really well and have a great taste.
Definitely needs 2 eggs. I didn’t use the almond extract but I can’t imagine that alone would have made the difference between one egg and two. The dough came together right away as soon as the second egg was added. Once I did that it baked well and tasted great.
I have very little baking experience, and what I do have is sketchy. I volunteered for the cookie exchange at my son’s school, and I came across this recipe to try. Worst case scenario, I have to buy some to bring. I appreciate you letting us know that the salt can be omitted. My husband has an inner ear condition that is severely effected by his sodium intake. I omitted the salt, realized I didn’t have white sugar, and used brown sugar when I googled to see if I could do so. I have to say, I am having an extremely difficult time NOT eating them all as I pull them out of the oven! I’m still figuring out how to roll the dough to the best thickness, and I can’t seem to not mess up the shapes of the cuts outs when transferring to the baking sheet. But they came out very tasty, and I am looking forward to trying your icing recipe shortly and attempting to decorate!
Thank you for a great recipe.
These worked great! The dough was so easy to roll out. I added a little (1/4) of an extra egg because it was so crumbly and I needed a little more liquid to help it hold together. I was using really small eggs though. A medium or large egg would probably be enough. I left them in for 7 1/2 minutes and they were still very soft, but not too soft. They tasted very good too. Did not lose their shape at all. I will definitely be using this as my go to recipe from now on. Thank you!
I made these and since I like to bake for others I made this batch times 4….sooooo have a tons of cookies!! Everyone loves them and can’t stop at just one 😁 i used buttercream icing. They will be my go to sugar cookie unless someone has an almond allergy. Thanks for sharing. Wish i could post pictures of my creations lol
I was looking for a Christmas cookie recipes for my jobs Christmas party bake off and came across this recipe! These cookies look simple to make and very delicious! Thanks for posting this recipe! Looking forward to making these for the party!
How do these taste without frosting? I need a sugar cookie for my daughter to take to school for a project but don’t want to frost them and make them messy.
Wow there is no words but to say these are by far the best cookies I have ever made at the age of 50 the dough is easy to handle, they bake perfect at 6 minutes and the taste is absolutely wonderful thank you so much for sharing your cookie recipe absolutely perfect
We tried this recipe for the first time last night. Very delicious. Can’t wait to decorate them with my toddlers today. ♡
Is the 1cup butter equal to 250g? I don’t really want to try cram butter into a cup to measure it.
Great Recipe! Baked each pan for seven minutes and they came out perfectly. I loved the no refrigeration option! Will definitely use again.
I made the sugar cookie recipe, and the dough turned out dry and gritty. When I rolled it up, I cut it into slices and it looked like pork tenderloin. Lol
Along with the other 400+ comments – I’ve been making this recipe for the last two years and it is amazing!!! I make 7-10 cookie trays every year and people always comment on how great these cookies are! Thank you!!!!
Question- do the cookies freeze well? Un frosted or frosted?
Baked, unfrosted is what I suggest for freezing.
These turned out great! The directions are so thorough and easy, except I didn’t see a couple of minor instructions—I softened the butter at room temperature and baked on ungreased cookie sheets. I only have a hand mixer and had to use several different types of sheets. All of the batches baked perfectly—it’s such an foolproof recipe! The cookies truly taste wonderful even plain. I can’t thank you enough for this. It’s a keeper.
Made this sugar cookie recipe and it is fantastic!! The cookies kept their perfect cookie cutter shape after coming out of the oven! Super soft cookies that taste amazing!
I don’t need a kitchenaid mixer because I have one lol (and I know that the giveaway has passed). I just wanted to comment that my husband who is the king of “I don’t have a sweet tooth” told me these were the best cookies I’ve ever made and to only make these forever! And that I don’t need to frost them! So thank you for this recipe!
Definitely delicious, but mine did not hold shape at all and needed about 13 minutes of cook time
I made these and the dough worked great but they are SUPER crumbly once cooked. I did varying thicknesses (but mostly 1/4 inch) and cooking times and I couldn’t even pick them up off the cookie sheet.. oh well, to another recipe!
My mom is highly allergic to almonds, can you leave the almond extract out and they still look and taste good?
Yes
I use this recipe every holiday season!!! It’s my favorite and it’s so nice how they keep the sharp lines and hold their shape.
Just wondering if you can turn this into a gingerbread recipe for a house, or if you have a go to recipe?
This is my go-to gingerbread recipe https://www.inkatrinaskitchen.com/sweetsugarbelles-favorite-gingerbread/
I love this so much, these all look so amazing! I have featured this on my holiday tradition roundup.
Thank you SO much for this recipe. It is my Go To recipe now for Christmas Cookies to decorate with the grandkids. They hold their shape, taste delicious and travel beautifully. Such a simple recipe! I am passing it along to my kids so they can keep the tradition going.
Thanks Again!!
I followed the the directions and they are PERFECT.
This is such a great recipe I LOVE IT. Especially with Christmas right around the corner. You have the perfect sugar cookie dough for the perfect Christmas cookies.
P.S. I used lemon extract instead of the almond extract and it was also very good.
Well it doesn’t look like there are any comments! So I’m going to leave one! I’ve been using this recipe and ONLY this recipe for over 2 years and I absolutely love it! I’m not sure if you’re the one who came up with it or you’re just sharing it but it is fantastic! Always a win!