BEST Easy Sugar Cookies
Best Easy Sugar Cookies are so easy, kid friendly, and will impress even the fanciest cookie connoisseur. Fluffy, soft, and super flavorful, bake up a batch this weekend, and let your kids help — this is a cookie for the whole family!
Servings:24 cookies
Ingredients
- 2 cups butter, at room temperature
- 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, or 1 teaspoon vanilla + 1 teaspoon almond extract
- 4 large egg yolks
- 4 ½ cups all purpose flour
frosting/icing
- 2 ounces cream cheese, softened
- ½ cup (8 tablespoons) butter, softened
- 1 teaspoon almond extract, or vanilla extract
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 6 cups powdered sugar
- ⅓ cup milk, or as needed
- food coloring, optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large bowl cream together butter and sugar.
- Mix in salt, vanilla (and/or almond extract) and egg yolks until blended.
- Add flour 1 cup at a time, mixing after each, until just combined.
- Divide dough in half and shape each half into a ball.
- Place on top of a sheet of parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat and roll out to 1/4 inch thickness (slightly thinner for more cookies, slightly thicker for bakery-style cookies though this will yield fewer cookies).
- Chill rolled dough for 15 minutes.
- Cut into shapes with cookie cutters and place at least 1 inch apart on a baking sheet.
- Bake in preheated oven for 8-9 minutes (for 1/4 inch thick cookies. for thicker cookies they'll need an extra minute or so, for thinner cookies take them out by 8 minutes.) and allow to cool on baking sheet for at least 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely.
prepare the frosting/icing
- While the cookies are cooling, prepare the icing. In a large bowl cream together cream cheese and butter until smooth.
- Add extract and salt and mix til smooth.
- Add 1 cup powdered sugar, followed by 1 tablespoon milk, mix until incorporated, and repeat (1 cup powdered sugar + 1 tablespoon milk) until all of the powdered sugar is incorporated. Mix on high speed until light and fluffy, add additional milk 1 tablespoon at a time as needed to get a light and airy frosting. Add a couple drops of food coloring if desired.
- Spread on cooled cookies and add sprinkles if desired. Store at room temperature or chilled in airtight container up to 1 week.
Notes
Makes roughly 22-32 cookies depending on the size of your cookie cutters.
For thicker bakery-style sugar cookies simply roll the dough to about 1/3 of inch thick before cutting and then bake for an additional 1-2 minutes.
This recipe can easily be doubled, you just need a really big bowl for the dough and should divide the dough into 4 parts rather than 2 before rolling out and cutting.
Nutrition
Calories: 441 kcal, Carbohydrates: 61 g, Protein: 3 g, Fat: 21 g, Saturated Fat: 11 g, Trans Fat: 1 g, Cholesterol: 76 mg, Sodium: 252 mg, Potassium: 44 mg, Fiber: 1 g, Sugar: 42 g, Vitamin A: 722 IU, Vitamin C: 1 mg, Calcium: 20 mg, Iron: 1 mg