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”
These cookies are amazing!! Thank you so much for the recipe- absolutely adore these cookies, I roll them thick so that they come out soft
These cookies are the bees knees!! Sooooo delicious! I love to roll them out on the thicker side so they’re nice and soft. Absolutely amazing! Thank you so much for the amazing recipe xx
I just wanted to say that these are the absolute best sugar cookies! I make them all the time and I haven’t had a bad batch yet! I have found that if I roll 1/2 of the dough between two pieces of parchment paper, I don’t have to add any extra flour. No sticking and no mess! I can make an entire batch in 40 minutes…from mixing, to cutting, to baking! Thank you for such a fabulous recipe!
Hello ! I’ll be giving this recipe a try this weekend. One question, what ingredient can I replace the Almond Extract with? It´s kind of hard for me to find it in groceries where I live.
Thanks a million!
I would omit it if it’s not available to you.
I made a batch today and they came out perfect. Though humidity levels are very high these days where we live, I only added more flour on my bench and they cutters did a wonderful job! It is now one more favourite recipe in my book!
Best cookies ever! I tried the recipe and loved it.
I made half of this recipe today as a test batch. I followed the directions exactly but instead of a crumbly dough I got a sticky one. I cut about 5 cookies and then kneaded some more flour into it which seemed to fix it. Still not crumbly but better to work with and did not spread. Aside from that, this is a good recipe! Very flavorful and a good texture
Thanks for posting this recipe. For the first time in my 38 years, I finally had great success in making cut-out sugar cookies. Based on reading that the dough may be crumbly, I added a tablespoon of warm water with the egg. My dough was not crumbly at all. I did end up putting half the dough in the fridge (due to a time constraint), but it was just fine when I took it out. I did wet my hands with that second batch and it was perfect. I have tried probably 15 different recipes and they were always mediocre. I agree with cutting them thicker as well. I prefer a thicker, softer sugar cookie. Mine took about 10 minutes to bake. Thanks again!
I try this recipe…. very nice and easy… i omit the bakibg poweder to keep cookies shape and it was perfect … thank u
I ABSOLUTELY LOVE, LOVE, LOVE these cookies!! So easy to work with, easy to decorate!! Katrina you are the BEST!! Thank you for sharing this with us!!
Hi, I will like to know if I can replace almond extract with pure vanilla extract?
This is my favorite cookie recipe!! It is so easy to make and has the best flavor.
this recipe is great! I love the texture and flavor! This will be my all time recipe for sugar cookies from now on. Thank you so much for this site.
This is an excellent dough to work with. I reworked the dough 4 times doing cutouts with my kids. It never once stuck to the table. They do expand a bit in the oven. I added a pinch of salt which made them salty. This will be my new cutout recipe for sure! Thank you! Wondering if those who had trouble omitted the almond extract altogether. We subbed it with vanilla.
I made these today, for a dear friend’s pregnancy announcement picture shoot tomorrow. I have a go to cutout cookie recipe that requires chilling, but tried yours because my friend wanted to learn how to make cutouts, and because we had a limited amount of time. We only got a 14 cookies, but it’s ok because they had to be big enough to write on and we rolled them thick. The one lonely little bite I got of a cookie that cracked on its way to the cooling rack was delicious! And, I’m so excited to see that they really do keep their shape!!! They’re supposed to look like Valentine’s conversation heart candies, and the clean edges made them perfect ! I made your buttercream recipe using half shortening and half butter and it was perfect, too! Next time I think I’ll try the dough hook for the last bit of flour…kneading it in worked but was hard on my hands and wrists. Thanks for sharing the recipe!
I feel silly asking this because it appears many people have used the recipe with no problem. But if your butter salted or unsalted?
These turned out perfect and delicious. Thanks!
I just made these as an “I’m sorry, I love you” gift for my girlfriend. I tested one and these are definitely the best sugar cookies I have ever made and quite possibly the best I have ever eaten in my life. Thank you, Katrina for sharing this lovely recipe! She will love these, for sure!
I cut the recipe in half (beat the egg in a mixing cup and used half). The cookies came out PERFECT texture, shape, color, taste, fantastic! My butter wasn’t completely softened so it looked a bit crumbly but once I turned it out and kneaded it, it came together beautifully. I made royal icing but had no food coloring so I put some frozen blueberries in the microwave and substituted their juice for the water. It was only a light color purple but tasted great on the cookie! Thanks for sharing this great recipe it’s a keeper!
Hello from France! Just made these with my almost 3yr old. Thank you for posting an excellent, quick and easy recipe. It works well with a regular mixing bowl and a wooden spoon too 😉 We cooked them at 180°C and it was perfect. Instead of vanilla (didn’t have any in the pantry) we put orange flower water with the almond extract. Lovely flavour. We often use it in crêpe recipes. Thank you once again for helping us with a fun baking afternoon.
I make these cookies for my dad, he loves them thin, hard and crunchy. He (and everyone else) absolutely LOVES them, they don’t lose their shape and I love that you don’t have to chill them. Thin cookies I got 30-50, honestly I don’t know maybe more. The one thing I noticed is that the dough is kind of dry, I have had to add some liquid the past few times I’ve made them. Thanks for the recipe!
I was really disappointed by this recipe. I love sugar cookies and wanted to try someone else’s cookies. Made them last night and as soon as they cool they are hard crunchy cookies. The flavor was really bland. Definitely not making them again…
Right???? Needs salt!!
Great! I just made so many cookies! They are great and the dough was very easy to make (did all by hand). There was so much dough, couldn’t see the end of it 😉 One thing was very hard though: to stop my kids from eating the whole cookies ! :p
Oh they are brilliant – quite rich! But very easy to make and perfectly easy to cook, do everything that you promised! Thanks
I am looking forward to trying these tonight , hope they are a keeper.
Looks like there might be varying results bases on quantity, ambient temp, etc. – any chance you could publish based on weight of ingredients, both metric and imperial? Might make it a bit more accurate on my part!
In Australia butter is packaged in 250g or 500g packages which is just a bit bigger than the 1 or 2 American ‘sticks’ of butter, I think. I guess any extra butter might make them likely to lose their shape so will try to follow your quantities to the letter. Many thanks.
Thank you for this great recipe! I made a few dozen beautiful mini cookies for our family Christmas party and painted them with buttercream icing and they were GONE within a couple minutes. This will be my go to sugar cookie recipe from now on.
I made these in Ireland today and brought them to my in-laws for Christmas dinner. The dough seemed crumbly at first, but once I started kneading, it came together quickly and easily. This will be my go to sugar cookie recipe from now on. I didn’t have enough time today, so we’re going to use your royal icing recipe and decorate the leftover cookies tomorrow. Thanks for sharing a great recipe!
i am so so happy I came across this recipe on Pinterest! I have been using a different recipe for years but always hated the fact you had to chill the dough. These cookies came out absolutely PERFECT!!! I will never make another sugar cookie recipe ever again. It was so great for my daughter and I to just be able to mix up the dough and get straight into rolling out the dough and cutting our Christmas cookies. I have made sugar cookies with her for years and these are the absolute BEST!! The edges were just perfect. Can’t stop raving about how wonderful they look and taste. Thank you so much for sharing such wonderful recipe!! Merry Christmas and happy holidays
I was hopeful in trying a different sugar cookie recipe. These still got puffy. :/
So I made these cookies for the first time and was really excited. I was able to get about a dozen and a half out of them before the dough just wouldn’t stick together any longer. I would try to roll it out and it oils literally fall apart. I would knead the dough in my hand and then try to roll it and it would do the same thing. After about 45 mins of not making any progress I decided to shelf about a little under half of the dough. I wrapped it in plastic wrap and placed it in the fridge. The next day I let it sit out (for longer than 10 mins because at this point the dough was hard as rock) for about 2 hours. It was soft enough to try. I was again having the hardest time with the dough crumbling. I would try to roll balls it would literally crumble in my hand. I put water on my hands and worked it into the dough and it seemed like it would stick with some added flour. But that only got me so far. I ended up with a little over 2 dozen of cookies and they’re absolutely delicious but I don’t think I’ll be using this recipe again.
Thank you so much for this recipe! I just made these with my kids and they turned out perfect! I LOVE that this dough holds it’s shape and doesn’t have to be refrigerated! The kids raved about the taste and declared our Christmas cookie day “a success”!
Can I add food coloring to this dough?
I just made this recipe and they are to DIE FORE!!! These are the best sugar cookies ever for so many reasons!!
1- Super easy to make
2- Cooks so fast
3- They hold their shape PERFECTLY
4- The slight almond shape is amazing!!!
5- They are SO SOFT!
6- They are delicious!!!
Seriously. Everyone needs to make these cookies RIGHT NOW. Thank you for the recipe!!!!
Hello all.
Came upon this recipe on Pinterest. Was needing one to make cookies with my 4&7 yr old boys for Santa. I mixed the dough up in my Ninja blender thing. Worked wonderfully. I did have to add more flour it was so wet and sticky. Only made 22 cookies. We used good size cutters. The dough taste good let’s see how they turn out. Then the hard part decorating them with 2 kids. Sigh Merry Christmas every one.
I made one batch of these today to put on goody trays. I did them by hand because I don’t have a stand mixer and the dough came together perfectly. No crumbling, didn’t have to wet my hands, and easy to transfer to the baking sheet with a cookie spatula. They were so easy and they taste like my “perfect” recipe I lost years ago. I think I’ll try less baking powder next time to cut down the puffiness, as I like my sugar cookies a little crisp, but the taste is outstanding. I’m making more on Christmas Eve to take to a family dinner on Christmas. Thanks!
Can I use self raising flower?
And than leave the bakingpowder out?
Thanks
Perfect cookies!! This recipe is a keeper! They baked exactly as stated. Not sure why people always have such different results! Follow the recipe, and you won’t have any problems!
I tried this recipe and it was absolutely amazing. This will definitely be my go-too sugar cookie recipe from now on. Thanks so much!
These cookies needed to be refridgeateed and they did expanded a lot after cooking however the tast was so good I can look pass these flaws
I tried this recipe today, and there are NO words good enough to explain what a wonderful recipe this is! I’ve been baking for almost 50 years, and have ALWAYS been intimidated by roll out sugar cookies – I could never make a dough that was easy to handle, easy to roll out, easy to pick up with a spatula and transfer to a baking sheet. This dough not only was ALL of these characteristics, but it also tastes delicious! My KitchenAid mixed the dough up to perfection in no time, and I was done with making the dough, dividing it into thirds, rolling each portion out and cutting the shapes, and baking them all in under 90 minutes – AMAZING! Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing this perfect recipe. I may make cut out cookies once a week, now that I finally have a trusted recipe to use! Sally
My first time making sugar cookies, they turned out great! Thanks for the great recipe!!
Thank you for this excellent recipe! Easy to make, no wasted time and ready to roll!!!
Merry christmass from Canada
Francine Lafleur
Montreal, Canada
fraisiperles.com
Do you have any vegan sugar cookie recipies? thank you
Just made two batches of these cookies in the past 2 days…absolutely perfect! I I didn’t even need to wet my hands to bring the dough together…it came together on its own in the mixer! Didn’t have the almond extract, so I used vanilla and WIlton butter flavor and it tasted great. The second batch I added a dash of cinnamon, and it livened them just a bit more. this has become my sugar cookie go-to recipe! Thanks so much!
These are absolutely the best sugar cookies !! Your recipe is amazing, it works wonderfully. I have always loved sugar cookies and like most, was stuck with the recipes that required hours of “chilling” and resulted in cookies with no shape. These cookies TASTE good and keep their pretty little shapes, just as you said. Anyway, thank you for sharing. This is great !!!
I can’t remember if I commented on this already, but this is my go to recipe now. I tried with my boys last year for Christmas and they were perfect. Came to this again this year and it’s just perfect. Thank you so much for sharing. So easy, so good and perfectly cut! 🙂
Hi Katrina! I just wanted to let you know that I made this cookie dough last week and it was, by far, the easiest cut out cookie dough I’ve ever worked with! The dough was absolutely delicious and will definitely be my go-to sugar cookie dough from now on! The cookies received rave reviews! Thank you so much!
I have always wished I had a mixer like this one, it would make cookie making so much easier
These are AMAZING! I just made them for my daughters 3rd birthday. It was a FROZEN birthday party and I cut them into beautiful snowflakes and died the dough light blue. I’ve never seen cookies hold their shape this well. Also on a side note- They also tasted phenomenal!
Hi Katrina, I made these cookies only a few days ago as a test batch and they turned out perfectly. I am now ready for my non-test batch and made them last night but they didn’t hold like the original one. Is there something I can do to stop the spreading? I keep going through my mind – what I might have done wrong – did I over mix? Should I lower the baking powder? Your response would be greatly appreciated as I need these today