Name: Cut Out Sugar Cookies
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 8 min
Total time: 108 min
Ingredients: 1 cup salted butter (softened); 1 cup granulated white sugar; 1 large egg; 1 tablespoon vanilla extract; ¼ teaspoon almond extract; 2½ cups (300 grams) all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled); ½ teaspoon baking powder; ½ teaspoon salt

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Cut out sugar cookies made with my recipe come out of the oven looking like the cutter, not like mystery Christmas blobs. They’re soft, buttery and vanilla-forward, with a little almond in the background. Pull out every cookie cutter you own.

a couple of decorated cut out sugar cookies on a cooling rack.

Christmas is sugar cookie season for me, especially the kind we can cut into shapes and decorate. My mom used to bake sugar cookies with my kids when they were growing up, and they’d cut out letters, spell out their names and then cover them in icing. They loved baking with her, and I love that they’ll always have that memory together.

Getting the dough ready for all that cutting is easier than you’d think, because I roll it out before it ever goes in the fridge. It’s so much easier to work with while it’s still soft, and once it’s rolled out between parchment, chilling gives me a flat, firm sheet that’s ready to cut. I don’t have to wrestle a cold disk of dough with a rolling pin.

Once the cookie cutters are out, my cranberry orange shortbread cookies are another cookie I bake for the Christmas tray.

CHRISTMAS FAVORITE

Why I Trust These Cookies With Little Decorators

These cookies hold up really well, whether they’re going on a Christmas cookie tray, into a gift tin or into the hands of a few little decorators. They bake with a nice, sturdy shape and don’t get crumbly when they’re handled. As long as you let them cool completely before decorating, they’ll stand up to plenty of kid-level enthusiasm.

The Step People Always Skip

After the shapes are cut, they go back in the fridge on the sheet pan for another 10 to 15 minutes before they bake. It’s a short chill, and it’s easy to skip because the dough already had its long one.

The dough warms up while you’re cutting and moving the shapes, and warm dough spreads in the oven and softens the edges you cut.

Chill the cut cookies until they’re cold to the touch, then bake them. Those few minutes in the fridge are what keep the edges sharp in the oven.

What Goes Into the Dough and Why

Salted butter: Salted butter gives these their rich, buttery flavor, and the extra salt in the recipe is on purpose too. If you only keep unsalted butter, use it and add a little more salt. Let it soften to room temperature first so it beats up creamy with the sugar.
All-purpose flour: Spoon the flour into the measuring cup and level it off instead of scooping it straight from the bag. Scooping packs extra flour into the cup, and too much flour makes the dough dry and crumbly. The weight is on the recipe card if you’d rather use a kitchen scale.
Vanilla extract: Vanilla is the flavor that leads in these cookies, and that’s why the recipe calls for a full tablespoon of it.
Almond extract: There’s only a tiny bit next to all that vanilla, so the cookies don’t taste like almond. It adds a little extra bakery-style flavor, and I love the richness it brings, but I’d call it optional if you don’t like almond.

snowflake shaped cut out sugar cookies on a cooling rack.

How to Make Cut Out Sugar Cookies

Step 1: Make the Dough Beat the softened butter and sugar until creamy, about 1 to 2 minutes, then mix in the egg, vanilla, and almond extract. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt, then add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients a little at a time until a soft dough comes together. Sugar cookie dough in a white mixing bowl.

Step 2: Roll It Out, Then Chill It Divide the dough in half and roll each half between two sheets of parchment paper to ¼ inch thick, the thickness I’ve found works best for this dough. Slide the sheets into the fridge for 1 to 2 hours, or overnight, until the dough is firm. Rolled sugar cookie dough with a rolling pin.

Step 3: Cut and Chill Again Peel off the top sheet of parchment, cut out your shapes and set them on a sheet pan. Put the whole pan back in the fridge for 10 to 15 minutes, until the cookies are cold to the touch. Cut out sugar cookie shapes on a baking sheet.

Step 4: Bake Until the Bottoms Barely Brown Preheat the oven to 375°F. Bake on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 6 to 8 minutes until the bottoms are set and barely starting to brown. Do not overcook. Move them to a cooling rack to finish cooling. Baked cut out sugar cookies cooling on a wire rack.

Tried It and Loved It

This is by far the easiest and best sugar cookie recipe I have ever tried! This will be my go to!

– Shelly Graham

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What to Do With the Scraps

Every sheet of dough leaves scraps behind once the shapes are cut, and you can get more cookies out of them. Gather the scraps and roll them out between parchment again, and if they’ve gone warm or soft while you were working, chill them before you cut and bake. I haven’t tested how many times this dough can be re-rolled, so that’s the one thing I can’t promise here.

How to Tell They’re Done

I start checking at 6 minutes. You’re looking for cookies that are set, especially on the bottom, but still quite pale on top, and by 8 minutes the bottoms should be barely beginning to brown.

Don’t wait for the tops or edges to turn golden. If they bake too long, you lose that soft sugar cookie texture, and they firm up and turn crisp as they cool.

How I Decorate Them

Once the cookies have cooled completely, the fun is really in the decorating. These are the kind of cookie people want to pick up and look at before they eat, especially with a mix of shapes and decorations on the tray.

I’ve tinted the dough itself different colors, and I switch up the frosting, the decorations and the cookie cutters depending on the holiday. Hearts for Valentine’s Day, letters for names, and pretty much anything you have a cutter for, which is what makes these so fun. For a decorating party, set out bowls of colored icing, sprinkles and other edible decorations and let everyone make their own.

The Icing I Use on These

My sugar cookie icing that hardens is what I use when these get decorated. It stirs together in one bowl and takes gel food coloring without thinning out. Add sprinkles right after you ice each cookie, because the icing dries fast. Give it 12 to 24 hours to set all the way.

a couple of heart-shaped cut out sugar cookies with sprinkle.

Packing Them Up as Gifts

A box or tin of these makes an easy gift for teachers, friends and coworkers, and a little care in packing keeps the decorations looking the way you left them. Before anything touches the cookies, make sure the icing has set all the way.

Bag them one at a time. Clear treat bags tied with ribbon, or closed with a heat sealer, keep each cookie protected and look pretty doing it.
Layer with parchment. In a tin or a box, lay the cookies flat and slip a sheet of parchment between each layer so the icing doesn’t scuff.
Pack them snug. Pick a container that fits, so the cookies can’t slide around, and fill any gaps with crinkle paper or tissue.
Mix up the tin. They look great next to a few other cookies from my Christmas cookie recipes list.

Storage, Freezing and Make-Ahead

On the counter: Keep the baked cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week.

Make the dough ahead: The dough keeps in the fridge for 1 to 2 days, so you can make it ahead and bake when you’re ready. That’s another thing I love about this cut out sugar cookie recipe.

Freezing baked cookies: Freeze undecorated cookies in a freezer-safe container for up to 3 months, and decorated cookies for up to 1 month.

Freezing the cut shapes: I haven’t tested baking these from frozen. Other bakers freeze unbaked cut outs in a single layer, then bake them straight from the freezer and add a couple of minutes to the bake time.

a couple of christmas cut out sugar cookies.

More Cookies for the Christmas Tray

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