5 Mistakes to Avoid When Making Sugar Cookies (2024)

Kelli Foster

Kelli FosterSenior Contributing Food Editor

Kelli is a Senior Contributing Food Editor for Kitchn. She's a graduate of the French Culinary Institute and author of the cookbooks, Plant-Based Buddha Bowls, The Probiotic Kitchen, Buddha Bowls, and Everyday Freekeh Meals. She lives in New Jersey.

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updated Oct 29, 2020

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Whether you make beautiful cut-outs, dust them with colored sugar, or sandwich them with buttercream or Nutella, sugar cookies are a holiday staple!

Before you whip up your next batch of sugar cookies, be sure you’re not making one of these five common mistakes.

  • Get a recipe: 18 Cookie Recipes for Your Holiday Cookie Exchange

1. Using butter that’s too soft.

We’ve all been there — wanting to make cookies yet forgetting to take the butter out of the refrigerator to soften. Whatever you do, fight the urge to heat it in the microwave for a few seconds. This will very likely make the butter too soft.

Cookies won’t hold their shape as well and are likely to turn out greasy when made with butter that’s too soft.

→ Follow this tip: Let the butter stand at room temperature for about an hour, until it’s soft and gives to gentle pressure. If you’re really pressed for time, you can speed the process along by cutting the butter into small cubes, or even grating it.


  • Why You Should Grate Your Butter the Next Time You Bake

When making cookies, I used to have a (very!) bad habit of mixing in the dry ingredients until they were completely incorporated. And then mixing the dough even more, for no good reason. Thankfully I was eventually steered in the right direction.

Over-working the dough yields a tough cookie, which is not at all what you want. The very best sugar cookies are soft and tender.

→ Follow this tip: One of the keys to great sugar cookies is mixing the dry ingredients only until they’re just incorporated, and not a second longer. Once the dry ingredients are added, less mixing equals more tender cookies.

3. Not chilling the dough.

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.

→ Follow this tip: Chill sugar cookie dough in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, or in the freezer for 15 minutes. The dough will be so much easier to work with! It will roll out nicely, and if you’re making cut-outs, chilled dough will help you get clean, sharp edges. Chilled dough also holds its shape better in the oven.

  • Why I Roll Out Sugar Cookie Dough Before Chilling It

4. Rolling out the dough too thick or too thin.

When you’re making cut-out cookies, it can be tricky to roll the dough just right. Roll it too thin, and the dough will be really fragile and may easily tear or break. Roll it too thick, and you run the risk of the cookies not baking evenly or cooking all the way through.

→ Follow this tip: For super soft, tender sugar cookies, roll the dough to 1/4-inch thick. The dough will be easy to work with, without breaking or tearing, and it will bake up nicely.

  • How to Make Cut-Out Sugar Cookies

5. Over-baking the cookies.

We often tell you to bake cookies until they’re golden brown. This isn’t the case with sugar cookies, though. Once the edges develop a golden hue, you’ve gone too far. While overcooked sugar cookies are certainly still palatable, they’ll be hard and crunchy, instead of soft and chewy.

→ Follow this tip: Pull the cookie sheet from the oven as soon as they’ve set and gained some color, but not too much. They should also look slightly crackled across the center.

What are your best tips for making sugar cookies?

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5 Mistakes to Avoid When Making Sugar Cookies (2024)

FAQs

5 Mistakes to Avoid When Making Sugar Cookies? ›

Overmixing is exactly what it sounds like: the process by which a dough or batter gets mixed too much, typically yielding dense, tough, or deflated baked goods. Overmixed doughs and batters may have an unappealing look or feel, which remain just as unappealing when they're baked.

What happens when you overmix sugar cookies? ›

Overmixing is exactly what it sounds like: the process by which a dough or batter gets mixed too much, typically yielding dense, tough, or deflated baked goods. Overmixed doughs and batters may have an unappealing look or feel, which remain just as unappealing when they're baked.

How do you keep sugar cookies from getting hard? ›

Keep Them Sealed

The key to keeping cookies fresh and soft is to seal them in an airtight container, like a resealable freezer bag. And here's a nifty little trick: add a piece of bread to the bag.

What makes cookies cakey vs chewy? ›

Sugar dissolved in baking forms a syrup as the dough heats up. Different types of sugars affect the texture because they absorb different amounts of water. Remember moisture is the key! White sugar creates crispier cookies and brown sugar creates chewier cookies.

What are three problems with cookies? ›

Cyber attackers can use third-party cookies for their own purposes. They might then access user data and carry out other cyber attacks as a result. Cross-site scripting, cross-site request forgery, and session hijacking are some of these attacks.

What happens if you over cream, butter, and sugar in cookies? ›

Over-creamed butter and sugar adds in too much air and alters the final texture – typically to be more gummy and dense. Sometimes over-creaming can produce cakes, cupcakes, or cookies that collapse upon baking or while cooling if the mixture is well and truly over-creamed (where it looks like curdled milk).

What is the best thickness for sugar cookies? ›

Place each portion onto a piece of lightly floured parchment paper or a lightly floured silicone baking mat. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll the dough out to about 1/4-inch thickness. Use more flour if the dough seems too sticky. The rolled-out dough can be any shape, as long as it is evenly 1/4-inch thick.

What happens if you put too much baking powder in sugar cookies? ›

Too much baking powder can cause the batter to be bitter tasting. It can also cause the batter to rise rapidly and then collapse. (i.e. The air bubbles in the batter grow too large and break causing the batter to fall.) Cakes will have a coarse, fragile crumb with a fallen center.

What is the secret to soft cookies? ›

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

Does extra butter make cookies softer? ›

Also, underbaking them by a minute or 2 will help them retain a dense, chewy bite, explains Jenny McCoy, pastry baking arts chef-instructor at the Institute for Culinary Education in New York. Adding more moisture to your dough in the form of extra butter, egg yolks, or brown sugar will make your cookies even softer.

Why put cornstarch in cookies? ›

“You can count on [it for] a softer and more tender crumb.” “A bonus benefit is it prevents the cookie from spreading too much while baking,” he adds, noting that a more compact, thick cookie typically yields a chewier outcome. But incorporating cornstarch isn't the only tip to make a cookie more palatable.

What are the three guidelines to follow when baking cookies? ›

You should allow about 2 inches (5 cm) of space between the cookies to keep them from spreading into each other. Use the same amount of dough on the spoon each time so that the cookies will be uniform in size. It is best to use a cool cookie sheet so the dough will not spread before it is placed in the oven.

What precaution should be taken while using cookies? ›

Use HTTPS

Using HTTPS is crucial for securing the connection between a user's browser and a web server. When a website employs HTTPS, it encrypts all data transmitted between the client and the server, including session cookies, preventing attackers from eavesdropping or tampering with the data.

What is at risk when using cookies? ›

Cookies by themselves do not pose security risks, however, they can be used by cybercriminals to impersonate the user, collect financial data, access their accounts or to steal passwords that are stored in the browser.

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