Old Fashioned Rolled Sugar Cookie Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Is it better to roll sugar cookies on flour or powdered sugar? ›

I roll my dough to 5/16″. Use powdered sugar instead of flour to roll your dough: if you're like me and use every bit of your dough, I recommend using powdered sugar instead of flour to roll your dough.

Rather than roll dough on a floured surface, roll it between sheets of non-stick parchment or waxed paper. Adding extra flour to the dough while rolling can make cookies tough. And cutout cookies release easily from paper when you move them to the baking sheet, preserving their shape.

Cream of tartar makes cookies chewy, as it precludes the sugar in the dough from crystalizing, which would lead to crispiness (ie: the opposite of chewiness).

Ingredients For the Perfect Sugar Cookie Recipe:

Baking powder – This gives the sugar cookies lift, without adding too much spread or browning. Fine sea salt – So important to balance the sweetness! Unsalted butter – It's important that your butter is at a cool room temperature, otherwise your cookies may spread.

You'll end up with a grainy, unappealing texture. Lastly, store-bought powdered sugar generally includes corn starch, which prevents it from caking together. This can lead to unpredictable outcomes when you interchange the two.

Rolling cookie dough between parchment eliminates the need to dust the dough with flour to prevent it from sticking to the work surface. The more flour introduced, the higher the chances of tough, dry cookies.

Chilling the dough is a key step in making sugar cookies, especially when you're making cut-outs. Even if you're tight on time, make sure to get the dough in the fridge, or even the freezer, even if it's only for a little while. Skip this step, and the dough will be sticky, and much harder to work with.

Be sure to scrape the sides of the mixing bowl a couple of times so there are no streaks of flour in the dough. Cover and chill the dough: Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour. This firms up the butter in the dough and helps prevent the cookies from spreading as they bake.

Baking soda also serves another important purpose when it comes to cookies: It encourages spreading by raising the mixture's pH, which slows protein coagulation. This gives the dough more time to set before the eggs set, which results in a more evenly baked cookie.

1. Cookies. Cornstarch does kind of incredible things to cookies. I mean not only does it give them soft centers, prevents them from spreading, and makes them somewhat thick (in a good way), but it also contributes to the chewiness factor, which, in my opinion, is the most important cookie attribute.

Which is better, baking soda or baking powder? ›

The leavening power of baking soda is about three to four times stronger than baking powder. This means that you need a lot less baking soda in your recipes. If a recipe calls for baking soda and you only have baking powder, you need to use the right baking soda to baking powder conversion.

After 30 minutes, take the dough out of the fridge and cut your shapes! Let the dough harden for around 30 minutes, then take the dough out. There's no need to let it come to room temperature before working with it. You can go from the fridge to your counter and immediately start cutting out shapes.

Just roll the dough into one inch balls and then coat them in equal parts cinnamon and sugar. Then I press them gently with a glass before baking them according to the directions on the package. That's it!

As a general rule of thumb, you should refrigerate cookie dough for at least 30 minutes and up to 24 hours. More than that, and you won't see a noticeable difference in the final product. Once the dough has chilled, let it warm up at room temperature until it's just pliable (about 5 to 10 minutes).

We have a new solution: roll out cookie dough with powdered sugar instead of flour. We came across this tip in a cut-out cookie recipe we made recently and had to pause for a moment to appreciate its sheer simplicity – and obviousness.

Powdered sugar has a much finer texture and a higher cornstarch content, which can absorb moisture and lead to a drier, crumbly cookie texture. If you use powdered sugar in place of granulated sugar, you'll likely end up with cookies that are more cake-like and less chewy.

But is sifting flour necessary? That depends. Sifting flour is recommended for some desserts where the goal is light, delicate, and fluffy results (think angel food cakes, sponge cakes, and chiffon cakes). However, sifting flour isn't a must for desserts that are chewy or crisp, like cookies.