Making beautifully decorated, delicious Holiday Sugar Cookies is easier than you think. All you need to start is a foolproof rolled sugar cookie recipe, a few helpful tools, and a step-by-step tutorial. The sugar cookie dough that appears below is easy to work with and produces a delicious, tender-crisp cookie that provides a perfect palette for flood icing and decorating. I add a combination of almond and vanilla extract to the mix for a lovely aroma.
I have outlined all of the details and provided pictures to clarify both the cookie baking and decorating process. When making the cookies, the main thing to remember is to keep your rolling surface and rolling pin well floured. The dough is quite sticky, and even after a prolonged chilling process it can be somewhat difficult to roll out. Keeping your surfaces floured will help you avoid trouble.
Once you’ve baked a batch, head over to my other blogs to learn how to make colorful icing and add beautiful details to your sugar cookies:
How to Decorate Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing
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Holiday Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, room temperature (3 sticks)
- 4 large eggs (room temperature)
- 3/4 teaspoon almond extract
- 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 5 cups all purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Slice the butter into tablespoon-sized pieces and put them in a large mixing bowl.
- Add the sugar.
- Cream together the butter and sugar for a few minutes till the sugar is fully incorporated and mixture is fluffy.
- Beat in the eggs, almond extract and vanilla extract with an electric mixer till creamy.
- Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt with a wooden spoon or spatula till a sugary dough forms. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour, up to overnight.
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Flour a rolling surface generously. Place a quarter of the cookie dough in the flour, then flip it and coat the opposite side with flour.
- Re-flour the surface below the dough and begin rolling it out with a lightly floured rolling pin. You want to roll the dough ¼ inch to ½ inch thick. ¼ inch will produce thinner, crisper cookies and more cookies; ½ inch will produce fewer cookies with a softer texture.
- Flip the dough once halfway through rolling, and keep the surface floured as you roll. The dough is quite sticky; keeping the surface and rolling pin floured will produce smoother results.
- When dough is at the desired thickness, use cookie cutters to cut shapes in the dough. In this tutorial I used Star of David and dreidel cookie cutters for Hanukkah (links in the blog above), but any shape—even plain, circular—can be used.
- Pull the excess dough trimmings from the cookies and reserve.
- Lift the cookies from the rolling surface and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet, spaced 1 inch apart.If any of the cookies stick to the rolling surface, use a pastry scraper to gently loosen the cookie and lift it.
- Re-roll out trimmings to make new cookies. When trimmings are small, add them to the next quarter of dough.Bake the cookies in batches for 6-8 minutes per batch till they just start to turn golden at the edges. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
- Continue rolling out the cookies and baking in batches, a quarter of the dough at a time plus trimmings, till all of the dough is used. The amount of cookies will vary based on how large your cookie cutters are, and how thin you choose to roll out the dough.
- Make sure the cookies cool completely before icing.
Aviva says
Hi! These look amazing. What can I substitute for the butter to make them dairy free/pareve?
Ashley at ToriAvey.com says
Hi Aviva, Tori’s assistant Ashley here. We haven’t tried making these pareve, but our favorite non-dairy butter substitute is Earth Balance vegan buttery sticks. They contain salt, so you may want to cut back or omit the salt from the dough recipe to compensate.
Joanne says
How far in advance can you make these? If I make them on a Thursday and store in an airtight container will they still be really tasty on Saturday?
Thanks in advance for your advice!
Ashley at ToriAvey.com says
Hi Joanne, Tori’s assistant Ashley here. They will be fine, you can also freeze them.
Lori says
What temp did you bake them at?
Tori Avey says
As recipe says, bake at 400 degrees F.
Cindy Martin says
Hi Tori, if my dough is too moist, can I add more flour, or will it harden after refrigerated ?
Tori Avey says
You should add flour until the dough feels like the right consistency. It will harden in the refrigerator, but the dough shouldn’t be too wet or overly sticky.
Shea says
Have you tried freezing after baking the cookies or even after frosting them? I need them for a party right after work and won’t have time to make them the days before.
Ashley at ToriAvey.com says
Hi Shea, Tori’s assistant Ashley here. Freezing the cookies in an airtight container would be fine, however I would not recommend freezing them after they are frosted.
Berdie Held says
Tori hi,
I’m a big fan of all your recipes! I moved to Israel 2 years ago and here the women love to bake as well. I made your sugar cookie recipe and made a variation that came out just delicious! I added the zesthert and juice of 1- lemon in one batch and in another, I topped the cookies with a sugar/cinnamon mix.
Thank you so much for your delicious recipes!
Berdie/ Hadera, Israel
Tori Avey says
Thank you for sharing Berdie! 🙂
Rphdeb says
Great recipe!!! The cookies come out light and delicious .
Best sugar cookie recipe I’ve tried. I did use the powdered sugar tip- it worked beautifully and kept the integrity of the ingredients by not disturbing the fat:flour ratio. Always use parchment paper for cookies, so they did not stick at all.
Also, my son is severely allergic to almonds, so I used all vanilla extract and added just a bit of orange zest, and they came out just delicious.
Sharon says
Hi, I’ve just found this site and it looks great. For these cookes, can I leave out the almond extract? Should I use more vanilla extract instead of the almond?
Thanks in advance for your help
Tori Avey says
Hi Sharon, feel free to substitute vanilla extract for the almond extract.
Leslie says
Have you tried making this with matza cake flour for Passover
Tori Avey says
No I haven’t, but that’s a really interesting idea. If you try it will you let me know how it turns out?
Ashley says
These cookies turned out great! The only comment I wanted to leave was to NOT use powdered sugar to dust your surface/dough. It melts onto the cookie sheet, making it almost impossible to get the cookies off the pan. I ruined half a batch of dough that way. I switched back to using flour, and the cookies came out PERFECTLY!
Leslie says
If the cookie sheet is covered with parchment paper no cookie will stick
Sheila says
Beautiful cookies with the blue icing!!! I would love to make this and offer a variety of colors and foods for our friends of various backgrounds. We host a lot and being Military are constantly learning about other friends traditions. I found this recipe specifically for my sons school party this week. Excited to try my first recipe from your site!
Mary says
Is it possible to make the dough ahead of time and freeze it?
Tori Avey says
Hi Mary- the dough for these cookies can be frozen in disks, wrapped in plastic wrap, like pie crust. When ready to bake, thaw until pliable, then roll the dough out and continue with cutting the cookies.
Michelle says
Hi ladies! I plan on making these cookies tonight in preparation for the holiday. I do want to make them pareve though since I plan on bringing them for Thanksgiving too. Has anyone used margarine for these instead of butter and do you think it would alter the taste of the cookies? I’ve been on an eternal quest for the perfect sugar cookie recipe and I cant wait to try this one! Thanks so much and happy thanksgivukkah!
sarah says
hi what type of sugar do you use?
thank you
Tori Avey says
Regular white sugar.
Kathrine Steakley says
I will do this recipe and share it to my friends this Christmas as a gift. I am sure they will love these cookies. Great idea by adding icing for the decoration.
Kandra says
Great cookie recipe. I did use powdered sugar to roll out the dough and it did not stick. They taste wonderful and your step by step instructions were so helpful.
Kandra Muallem says
Are you using salted or unsalted butter in the cookes?
Tori Avey says
Unsalted.
Kandra says
Thank you! We will be making these tomorrow.
Tori Avey says
Enjoy Kandra! You might want to try rolling them in powdered sugar rather than flour, as suggested by another reader. I’m going to try it that way next time I bake them!
Brenda Borzykowski says
These cookies are delicious. I used Jacquie Katz’s suggestion about the icing sugar. So much easier to roll and it doesn’t alter the taste of the cookie. Have you ever tried this on rolling a pie dough?
Jacquie Katz says
As you reroll in flour, your cookies may start to be tough and very hard. If you want to keep them soft and melt in the mouth all the way through, roll dough out in powered sugar. In fact, an aide in our Jewish preschool told me to do that for Hanukkah cookies and I started doing it for all rolled cookies–Purim Hamentashen in the thousands go easier this way.
Tori Avey says
Interesting tip Jacquie, though I didn’t notice any toughness on my cookies from flouring. Wouldn’t the sugar make the rolling process very sticky and messy?
Jacquie Katz says
Try it once, using the powered sugar as you would flour. You are probably a better pastry chef than I, but we made cookies with the very young students and it worked like a charm. It is only wet if your ingredients are too wet. I have even used it on pie dough. I am in North Carolina and it is often humid here, especially for working with flour. When you keep rerolling with flour, your flour to fat ration gets out of proportion. If you are making three dozen, you are probably fine. But if you are making bazillions, for every person you know and your Hanukkah party, it helps.
Tori Avey says
I will definitely give it a try. I am by no means a pastry chef, and it does make sense that when making a large quantity that excessive flouring would throw off the fat ratio. Thanks Jacquie!
Angelina V. Neau says
Good Morning,
I am a fan of making my own oriental dumplings. I am not if this would work for these cookies, however, the oriental people use cornstarch to roll out there dough’s. Nothing sticks to the counter and the dough does not become tough.
Might be worth giving it a try and it adds no fat.
Have a wonderful day!
Hester aka The Chef Doc says
This is a winner of a recipe, Tori 🙂 Your cookies came out gorgeous! I’ll have to try it out!