Mouthwatering Sugar Cookie Recipe that Your Family Will Love

If you like cookies that are crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, this is the sugar cookie recipe for you.

If I have one claim to fame in this house – it’s my sugar cookies. Oh it is a happy day when I decide to bake. 😉

Actually, this recipe is very easy. However, the pan you use can make a difference. I will explain.

What You Will Need

The first thing to do is collect your ingredients. To make about 4 dozen cookies you will need:

• 2 3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

The Process

Make the Dough

Start by preheating the oven to 395º. I know 395 seems like a weird temperature for cookies – but that is what works in my oven. Look at the pictures to gauge how your oven runs compared to mine.

While the oven is preheating, stir together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl and set it aside. You will be adding this to the wet ingredients later.

Note: This post contains affiliate links. This means that I make a commission if you purchase something when you click through one of my links – at no cost to you. See my Disclosure Policy here. 

(Practical Tip: If you store your flour in a separate tub like one of these, fill it up in the sink so you don’t spill flour all over the counter.)

In a large bowl, cream the butter and the sugar together for about 2 minutes. Then beat in the egg and the vanilla. I use this trusty, but ancient mixer to do this.

Once combined, gradually add your flour mixture to the butter and sugar mixture.

Your finished sugar cookie dough will look like this:

Use a mini scoop like this one to scoop out 1 inch balls of dough onto ungreased cookie sheets. If you don’t have a mini scoop then just roll them into balls by hand – the scoop makes the cookies appear more uniform.

Bake the Cookies

Bake the cookies for 10 minutes and take them out just as they begin to turn golden. The surface will be crackly but the cookie will still be really soft inside. At this stage I always think that mine should stay a little longer in the oven – but I take them out anyway.

Then let them cool on the hot cookie sheet for 2 minutes before moving them to a cooling rack. The cookies actually continue to cook while they sit on the hot sheet, so don’t skip this step.

Isn’t that little mini spatula cute?

The Cookie Sheet Matters

I also found that the baking sheets that you use actually do make a difference.

For this batch of cookies, I used my equally ancient AirBake cookie sheets for the first two dozen. But for the third dozen, I used a pizza stone instead (I only have 2 AirBake cookie sheets and wanted to get a jump start on the third set – and yes, the pizza stone is well worn and ancient as well).

As you can see in the picture below – the cookies that I made on the pizza stone stayed puffy and did not crackle like the ones that I made on the AirBake sheets. Also, the cookies were still uncooked inside at 10 minutes.

This happened quite by happenstance. I was truly surprised to see such a big difference in the result based on the baking pan.

I think for this sugar cookie recipe an air flow type baking sheet is the way to go.

Make It Dairy Free

You can modify this into a dairy free sugar cookie recipe by substituting Fleischmann’s Unsalted Margarine – which I believe is non-dairy (or other non-dairy margarine) for the butter.

Just increase the salt from 1/4 tsp to 1/2 tsp if you are using unsalted margarine.

Pin It

Other Recipes You Might Like

• Our favorite Banana Bread Recipe
• Pumpkin Bread Recipe