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The Best Easy Chewy Sugar Cookies Ever Recipe – chewy soft sugar cookies without any complicated steps, chilling, or rolling out – in just one bowl in under 20 minutes!
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At Sweet C’s, I add lots of tips in all of my recipes – because I am a home cook without any formal training, and I find I am more confident making dishes when I understand why it works, and what each ingredient means to the flavor of a recipe – my goal is for even the most beginner home cook to feel empowered in the kitchen.
I want each reader to walk away with a solid knowledge of each recipe, with all of the tips I’ve gathered from extensive testing of each recipe. I also answer questions my friends and family have asked about my recipes, to help everyone better understand the processes we use – and why!
Table of contents
Soft Pillowy Sugar Cookies
This is the best soft and chewy sugar cookie recipe – great hot out of the oven, cool with icing, or topped with cinnamon sugar! This is seriously my favorite easy sugar cookie recipe – they are soft, have a crunchy bottom, and a delicious buttery flavor.
These aren’t a cutout sugar cookie recipe – they are perfect, pretty, and pillowy soft sugar cookies. You don’t need to roll the dough, chill cookies, or even mix wet and dry ingredients separately. Just toss it all in one bowl and you’re on your way to the best super soft sugar cookies ever!
You can’t get any more delicious than these sugar cookies – and you just need a spoon, a large bowl, and a baking sheet to make them! These cookies, like our Sopapilla Cheesecake Bars, Lemon poke cake, and Chewy Molasses Cookies are super simple – even beginner cooks can make them!
How To Make Easy Soft Sugar Cookies
To make this recipe, we will need the following ingredients:
- Butter. Butter provides critical fat to make cookies chewy and soft, as well as gives a creamy rich flavor!
- Granulated sugar. Granulated white sugar mixes perfectly in this recipe to help give a classic sugar cookie flavor, even lift, and crispy baked bottom.
- Egg. Egg is a critical binder for our cookies, as well as additional lifting agent – giving rich, delicious flavor while keeping cookies light, puffy, and chewy.
- Vanilla extract. Vanilla gives cookies the perfect down-home, nostalgic, sweet and delicious flavor everyone loves.
- Almond extract. Almond extract mixed with vanilla extract sets sugar cookies apart – giving them a more complex flavor that
- All purpose flour. All purpose flour’s gluten profile is perfect for these no-fuss cookies – since we’re adding our own leavening, they don’t need self-rising flour, bread flour will be too dense, and cake flour too light.
- Baking soda. Baking soda is a leavening agent that helps work to puff cookies, keeping cookies light and puffy. While normally we need an acid to interact with baking soda to activate it, the heat from the oven will work in this recipe. Baking soda is added along with baking powder for a perfect texture that won’t spread and has great snap.
- Baking powder. Baking powder is a complete leavener – meaning it doesn’t need an acid to become activated. It combines with baking soda in this recipe to give our cookies the perfect pillowy texture.
- Salt. Baking with salt helps to keep your leaveners from over-rising, and adds a perfect balance to sweetness, enhancing your cookie’s flavor!
Once we’ve gathered our ingredients, we will use the following process:
- Mix. We won’t be separating wet and dry bowls for this recipe – go ahead and dump it all into one bowl and mix! Be sure not to overwork cookie dough. Use a cookie scoop to shape cookies.
- Bake. Bake at 350 until light, puffy, and browned on the bottom.
- Enjoy!
Tips and Tricks for Perfect Chewy Sugar Cookies & FAQs
Preheat oven completely. Preheat oven to 350 degrees before putting cookies in oven – making sure your oven is hot when cookies go in will help your cookies not spread and will keep the soft, pillowy texture.
Use room temperature eggs. Using room temperature, instead of cold, eggs help the eggs whip up faster and get a lighter texture.
Line Baking Sheets With Parchment Paper. While you can use silpat or a well greased baking sheet, I find the texture of these cookies comes out perfectly when baked on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Soften butter. Creaming your butter and sugar together is essential to this recipe – and you can’t do that with cold butter.
Add food colorings slowly. These cookies take beautifully to food coloring – simply add any food coloring slowly for best results.
Use sanding sugar. These cookies are also so light they look great topped with colored sugar, or even just a little powdered sugar sprinkled on them hot out of the oven!
Mix in a stand mixer for fastest results. If you don’t have a stand mixer, no problem – you’ll just need a little extra stirring action.
Don’t skip the vanilla extract and the almond extract. While they can be seen as optional, these cookies really get their amazing flavor from the vanilla extract and the almond extract to provide more depth to the flavor.
Recipe FAQ’s
We love to make this dough ahead of time and roll into balls, so we can pull out just as many cookies as we’d like to bake. Pop in the oven for a sweet treat anytime you have a craving!
To instantly soften butter, you can grate it on a cheese grater – or use this glass trick:
Add boiling water to a tall glass (make sure the glass is safe to use with boiling water.)
Let the glass get hot – and then dump all the water out.
Carefully place the glass over the stick of butter and let sit for 1 minute.
Remove the glass, and the butter should be soft!
Properly stored sugar cookies can last for up to two weeks in a cool dry place, or three months in the freezer.
Use these tips to keep yours tasting great long after you bake them:
Place cookies in an airtight container and separate cookies with strips of parchment paper.
I like to leave a piece of bread in the container to help keep cookies soft.
For best results, store container in the refrigerator to keep cookies cool – especially if iced.
Other Easy Desserts You’ll Love
If you love this easy chewy sugar cookies recipe, you’ll love my other easy desserts!
The Best Easy Chewy Sugar Cookies Ever Recipe
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The Best Soft Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- ¾ tsp almond extract
- 2 ½ cups all purpose flour
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and foamy, about 1 minute.
- Add in the egg, vanilla extract, and almond extract and beat until combined.
- Slowly add in flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
- Mix until just combined, do not overwork dough.
- Roll dough into 1″ balls.
- Place cookies on baking sheet, about 2″ apart from each other.
- Bake for 10-11 minutes, or until cookies are very softly browned on the bottoms.
- Allow to cool.
Video
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Is there a way to quarter this recipe? I’m single and 3 doz cookies would take me forever to eat and I don’t have the freezer space. Would using the whole egg be to much liquid?