We’re a little bit excited these days. Why? Uh, because cookie season is a-coming! OK, so you can have cookies all year round as wedding favours, baby shower goodies or as part of a sugar binge; but when the cooler weather strikes that’s when cookie season really arrives. Anyway, we have one go-to recipe that we use for every sugar cookie project. One of the great things about our best sugar cookie recipe is that it can be tweaked and turned into chocolate, almond, lemon or any other flavour you need. If you’re not a huge fan of gingerbread when the Winter months set it then adding a light spice to this basic recipe is a pretty good (and tasty) alternative too!
Our favourite and best sugar cookie recipe
Ingredients needed…
- 1 lightly beaten medium egg
- 400g plain flour (with a few tablespoons extra for rolling)
- 200g butter
- 200g caster sugar
- Extract or essence to flavour (optional)
01: In a stand-up mixer cream the butter and sugar together with any extract or essence you’re flavouring your cookies with. Make sure to mix until just combined. If you over beat the mixture this can lead to misshapened over spread cookies whilst baking. Not a good thing!
02: Add in the egg and lightly mix. Again you don’t want to over mix your ingredients. You’re also going to be adding in the dry ingredients soon which will then mix in the egg a little more.
03: Add in the flour and set your mixer to a low speed. Combine until a dough forms. You don’t need to use the dough hook for this if your stand-up mixer came with one. We always use the simple paddle attachment.
04: Gather up your dough into a rough yet mixed ball and wrap with cling film before leaving it to chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour and 30 mins. It’s OK if you have loads of other things to do and end up chilling the cookie dough for 4 hours to even a full day. We’ve never had a problem with this.
05: Whilst your dough is in the fridge you’ll need to preheat your oven to 180c/350f/gas mark 4.
06: When chilled remove the dough from the fridge and knead it a little after taking out of the cling film. Flour your work surface (with plain flour) and roll out to a good thickness. We like to work to a thickness of around 5-6mm. Thick cookies lose ‘snap’ and thinner cookies just end up too delicate.
07: Cut your cookie shapes and lay them onto a lined baking tray using a small angled palette knife. Make sure to leave a 2cm gap around each.
08: Now you need to chill your cut cookie shapes for around 30 minutes before baking.
09: Once they’re ready and chilled you can put them in your preheated oven for around 6-10 minutes. Set your time to 6 minutes first and test them. To check if they’re ready poke one lightly. If the cookie stays dented then it needs to bake for a little longer. If the dent raises back up then they’re ready!
10: Leave to cool for around 1 hour and they’re ready to decorate! Some use wire racks to cool, but there’s the risk of leaving a mark from the rack into the back of your cookies. Instead, we like to use marble pastry slabs; they also help your bakes cool down in half the time. If you have a marble counter top then even better!
When it comes to decorating sugar cookies you can leave them plain, use a simple glaze or you can try out our go-to royal icing recipe via the crafts blog and pipe away!
3 Comments
Hi. Thanks for sharing. Quick question, why don’t you use baking powder?
Hi. Great post. Not sure if my previous comment got posted. :/ I was wondering why you don’t use baking powder
Hi there Ayman!
Thanks for your comment. Baking powder shouldn’t be used with a sugar cookie recipe. Sugar cookies need to hold the shape they get cut into and baking powder causes a chemical reaction in dough that makes the dough (or batter) spread when baking meaning those nice cookie cutter shapes would end up looking a little strange. Hope this helps!