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.
2,093 Comments on “Best Sugar Cookie Recipe EVER”
This is the best and easiest sugar cookie recipe. I followed it and the recommendations in the recipe.
They keep their shape and are perfect for decorating!
Terrific recipe – it really work as advertised and is the recipe I’ve been looking for. THANKS!
I preface by saying – I am NO baker. LoL
I have made these cookies for the last 3 years and they never disappoint! I love the consistency, hint of almond flavor, and ease of baking. Will never need another recipe again!
Had great luck with this one!!! This is the second time I e made cookies too haha
Thank you so much for posting weight measures!!! There’s something about the way I scoop and level that I can’t ever get the right amount. I made these last year but having made a large quantity this year for my son’s holiday party (3 cookies per kid!), I can say confidently that I won’t need another cut out cookie recipe. Such an easy and no hassle recipe.
My dtr. tipped me off to your delicious sugar cookies. It is a family favorite. Any celebration or bad day deserves Katrina’s sugar cookies. The texture is flaky, but it is a sturdy cookie for decorating. Very easy to roll out and cut. A hint of almond makes the cookie even more perfect. I’m making my second batch of the day right now.
I love this recipe and am not a skilled baker… we joke that this recipe is “idiot proof”
I am just wondering if you can chill this dough. Say if I only want to bake a dozen tonight, could I store the remainder in the kitchen until I’m ready to bake the rest?
I come back to this recipe year after year! It comes out perfectly every time.
These are the best cookies I’ve made. They are so delicious… my great grandson is a picky eater and he loved them.. so thank you for sharing this recipe.
This recipe was super frustrating. The dough came together easily enough but finding the right ratio of flour to get it the right consistency where the dough didn’t stretch when transferring to the baking sheet was tough. My first few batches came out extremely undercooked even with the oven having preheated for a while and baking them for 8 minutes. I didn’t realize they were undercooked until I went to take a bite since they looked done by appearance. So they went back into the oven for another 4-5 minutes. Even fully cooked, I don’t think they taste very good- too floury. And unfortunately, there was still some spread on the cookies, which probably means I didn’t have the right consistency. Wouldn’t make these again.
Do you recommend a stand mixer (what kind of attachment) or will a hand mixer work?
Love this recipe because dough is manageable , not sticky.
Also like that it doesn’t have to be refrigerated.
I’ve tried a lot of sugar cookie recipe I’m my life. This one by far is the most aggravating. I’ve tried all the hints and I’ve yet to be able to make a ball nonetheless roll it out. It just crumbles. Guess I’m going to the store to find more ingredients for a different recipe🫤
Hi Rachel! I’m not the author of this recipe, but just made this last night so I happened to see your comment. I’ve made this twice and the first time, it was a little on the dry side like you explained. When I made it last night, I brought out my scale and measured the grams of flour out before adding it into the mix and it turned out perfect! If you don’t have a scale, you could use the spoon and level method of measuring – fluffing the flour with a spoon, then using the spoon to fill your measuring cup, and level it off with the back of a butter knife or something with a flat surface. Sometimes when measuring flour, if we pack it into a measuring cup, we can accidentally add too much resulting in that crumbly and dry texture. Might be worthy to note that I also used my sturdy stand mixer, so I’m sure that helped incorporate the ingredients a bit. Not sure if that’s what could have happened or if you already tried these methods, but figured I’d respond with what worked for our batch! 😊
Did you use a scale to measure? I was really frustrated with this recipe last year and decided to try it one more time this year but measuring with a scale and it worked great!
I have made these cookies several times and they are the best! they taste great (the almond extract adds so much flavor) they don’t take all day to make and the dough is so easy to work with. This is my go-to, forever sugar cookie recipe!
Really nice tasting sugar cookie. I’ve been making them for a few years now. Easy to assemble. I learned to roll out the dough between two large pieces of parchment paper to avoid having to use a floured surface, where dough ended up crumbly (frustrating to work with even if I added tsp of water to make it mailable)
I’m 56 years old, have been too intimidated to ever make cut out sugar cookies! Well, now I CAN make beautiful and delicious cookies!! This recipe was perfect!!! Made exactly as recipe called for!! They truly is the BEST SUGAR COOKIE RECIPE!!! Not ever changing!!!!
This is the best cut out cookie recipe in my opinion. I love that I can roll them out without chilling the dough first. The dough is dryer than most cut out recipes but that’s what helps with rolling them out. I barely have to use flour while rolling the dough.
I have made 6 batches in the past week for Christmas cookies. Thanks for the recipe!
I have been using this recipe for a long time. I LOVE it and as a baker I get a lot of request for these cookies. Sure I have to adjust sometimes; usually because of the quality of the ingredients.
very tasty cookie, I was nervous at first about the crumbly dough, but i squished together well!
Thank you for sharing your recipe. Great recipe. Easy to work with. Your instructions were Super.
Hands down the best sugar cookies I’ve ever made! Dough was easy to roll out and they taste amazing even without frosting!
I will never make another recipe. I make them gluten free for my daughters and they and their families love them. Especially my grandkids !
This is the perfect sugar cookie! I’ve been baking for years and I can say stop looking for another recipe. I made a practice batch and followed the directions to the “T” to see if I would like them. No changes necessary. This will be my go to cookie recipe from now on. Thank you for the perfect recipe!
Made recipe today as written and followed directions as written. Rolled dough to 1/4 ” thickness. Dough rolled smooth and did not spread during baking. Cookies are cooled and ready for grandson to bring out his artistic skills with icing and sprinkles! Definitely a keeper!!
This recipe did not work ! My dough was so crumbly and feel apart. i followed the directions to a “T”
I managed to squeeze the doughy hard enough to form a cooking and they were horrible. They tasted like flour and were very hard! no thank you, have to look for a brand new recipe!
These came out perfect! Definitely a recipe we will continue to use!
So crumbly.
Tried to wet hands, knead, etc…. Was able to piece together about 14 dry cookies. Will not make these again. Finding a new recipe as we speak so my daughter has something to decorate!
I swear by this recipe! I find that I don’t need all the flour she uses but if it’s dry I will add milk and that helps!
I am making these cookies but after mixing all the ingredients together, it seem a bit dry so I added 2 tbsp butter and that did the trick. Will see how the come out tomorrow when we bake them.
I baked these yesterday,, I added 1/4 cup of sugar though, plus when rolling them out, I used powdered sugar instead of flour and put demerara sugar on top,.. came out great, nice and sweet, the demerara sugar gave it a little crunch too.
These are the best!! Made them over the weekend and my family loves them! The recipe makes about 40 average sized cutout cookies. You really want to roll out to 1/4 inch thickness and don’t let them golden around the edges. Follow the time for cooking and they’ll turn out PERFECT! I also used the icing recipe and it was perfect!
I have been using your recipe and your frosting recipe for the last 3 years. I am 53 years old, have managed a bakery and have made a lot of sugar cookies in my time and I must say this is the best sugar cookie I have made or eaten. I LOVE this recipe!!!
I have been using your recipe and your frosting recipe for the last 3 years. I am 53 years old, have managed a bakery and have made a lot of sugar cookies in my time and I must say this is the best sugar cookie I have made or eaten.
I just finished making this sugar cookie recipe, and I had to leave a review. This is the simplest and most satisfying sugar cookie recipe I’ve ever made! Now when I incorporated everything it was very sticky/wet. Reading back on your blog it made me not worry about adding flour. I added one more cup, 1/3 at a time. Took it out of the bowl and kneaded in more floor until it reached Play-Doh consistency. Amazing how kneading the scraps enough it goes back to first roll out consistency. I normally dread making sugar cookies. Not this time! I’m going to be using this recipe from now on! Thank you.
Way too much flour, came out really dry mix.
Can I use salted butter and omit the salt?
I used salted butter and still added the salt and they’re fantastic.
this is what i did and they taste just fine
dough was too sticky.. added flour while kneading… taste like dough.. not sweet enough.. so disappointed.. have, another batch made I need to sweeten somehow.. I’ll add icing sugar
I’ve been baking for 35yrs. maybe more. made thousands of cookies. this is the best sugar cookie. it rolls so smoothly. Please my suggestions to anyone who has trouble making a rolled out sugar cookie your troubles are over.high complpliments to the great baker who invented these.Thanks so much.
I am not a baker, and have tried so many sugar cookie recipes to no avail. This one is an exception — not only does it taste great, but they cooked for me exactly how described. Definitely a keeper!
Katrina you are so real for this! Amazing work thank you queen
these were not sweet at all and tasted like dough..I would definitely add another half cup of sugar…I added a tbsp of orange zest and cognac for flavor and still bland…. plus side.. dough was soft and rolled out well.. maybe because I happened to have a scale and weighed my flour it actually came out to just 2 1/2 cups .. no wonder my cookies are dry every year… makes a difference… without weighing i would have used way too much flour.. with the listed amount the dough was almost wet and had to knead in a little extra while cutting out…
My dough was way too moist. Recipe didn’t take I to consideration humidity so I had to add extra flour and place it in freezer to firm up. I’m hoping the baking process doesn’t make them spread out to some unrecognizable shape. I used a scale and weighed every single ingredient. I am an advanced baker.
yes same here! I just made these and the dough spread while baking. The dough was pretty moist too, and I followed the recipe to a T. Not sure what went wrong…
Wanting to make gluten free, but the weight of gluten free flour is different than all purpose flour. Should I use the weight per cup which is on the bag or used the all purpose weight. Or use the volume measurement? Very confusing. Thank You.
With 3 sick kids and an activity to do, this was spot on–no chilling required is great. I like my sugar cookies softer so left them thicker per the recipe and they turned out great! Definitely a repeat. Also made the frosting in the linked recipe–perfection!
Just got done making these. I think I rolled the dough out a little too thick, so I had to bake mine waaaay longer. I left them in just until the edges turned golden and they are delicious. The flavor is very mild so I may add more almond extract and a pinch more salt next time. The best compliment that I can give is that the dough is VERY forgiving. I made these with my “I-can-do-it-myself” 6yo and even though we re-rolled scraps over and over, the cookies were still tender and soft.
best sugar cookie recipe ever! cookies hold their shape, don’t get too puffy, you don’t have to worry about browning on the bottom. I know it a good one when my mom says it’s better than her recipe lol love this
Seriously the BEST sugar cookies I’ve ever made. Could’ve been something that I did wrong but the dough was really sticky, I just added some extra flour and it was perfect!
thank you!
These were amazing and easy to make! I doubled the recipe and I got about 6dozen cookies out of the doubled recipe thank you so much….
So we made these cookies and I was SO excited because they kept their shape while baking but we went to decorate them and they keep falling apart. What did I do wrong? I was super pumped about this recipe! I want to make them perfect.
I have tried baking different sugar cookies over the years and they just don’t turn out near as good as these do. I followed the recipe exactly but only used pure vanilla because that’s all I had. The cookies turned out great! The best I have ever tasted and my husband loves them too! Thank you for sharing! My go to cookie from now on!
I’ve made these for a few years during the holidays for cut out cookies and they are always delicious. I had to cut the baking session early so I put the rest of the dough in a Ziploc bag and put it in the freezer do you think this will work to thaw and bake for Santa on Christmas Eve?;)
The recipe was good except the amount of baking powder could be less. My cookies came out with that bicarbonate soda taste you get if you add too much in a recipe. I would recommend just 1 tsp.