The Best Easy Chewy Sugar Cookies Ever Recipe (2024)

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By Courtney ODell

May 31, 2022, Updated Aug 31, 2022

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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!

The Best Easy Chewy Sugar Cookies Ever Recipe (2)

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Table of contents

  • Soft Pillowy Sugar Cookies
  • How To Make Easy Soft Sugar Cookies
  • Recipe FAQ’s
  • Other Easy Desserts You’ll Love
  • The Best Easy Chewy Sugar Cookies Ever Recipe
The Best Easy Chewy Sugar Cookies Ever Recipe (3)

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!

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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!
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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.

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Recipe FAQ’s

Can I freeze dough?

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!

How do I quickly soften butter?

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!

How should sugar cookies be stored?

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.

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Other Easy Desserts You’ll Love

If you love this easy chewy sugar cookies recipe, you’ll love my other easy desserts!

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The Best Easy Chewy Sugar Cookies Ever Recipe

If you love the best easy chewy sugar cookies recipe as much as I do, please give it a five star review and help me share on facebook and pinterest!

The Best Easy Chewy Sugar Cookies Ever Recipe (9)

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The Best Easy Chewy Sugar Cookies Ever Recipe (10)

The Best Soft Sugar Cookies

Yield: 3 dozen

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

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!

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 3/4 tsp almond extract
  • 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and foamy, about 1 minute.
  3. Add in the egg, vanilla extract, and almond extract and beat until combined.
  4. Slowly add in flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
  5. Mix until just combined, do not overwork dough.
  6. Roll dough into 1" balls.
  7. Place cookies on baking sheet, about 2" apart from each other.
  8. Bake for 10-11 minutes, or until cookies are very softly browned on the bottoms.
  9. Allow to cool.
Nutrition Information

Yield 36Serving Size 1
Amount Per ServingCalories 101Total Fat 5gSaturated Fat 3gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 2gCholesterol 19mgSodium 83mgCarbohydrates 12gFiber 0gSugar 6gProtein 1g

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Categorized as:
Cookies, Desserts, One Pot, Recipes

About Courtney

Courtney loves to share great wine, good food, and loves to explore far flung places- all while masting an everyday elegant and easy style at lifestyle blog Sweet C’s Designs. Sweet C's devoted to finding the best food and drinks you'll want to make or find, around the world!

Read More About Me

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The Best Easy Chewy Sugar Cookies Ever Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to chewy 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.

How to make sugar cookie better? ›

Take plain sugar cookies up a notch with exciting mix-ins like chocolate chips, rainbow sprinkles, toasted chopped nuts, chopped dried fruit or M&M's. Add these after blending your butter and egg into the sugar cookie mix.

Should butter be melted for sugar cookies? ›

Melted butter is best suited for drop doughs such as chocolate chip, peanut butter, and sugar cookies, as well as most cookie bars. You can usually adapt recipes that don't originally call for melted butter to use this technique if you're looking for an even fudgier texture.

Does baking soda or powder make cookies chewy? ›

Baking soda is typically used for chewy cookies, while baking powder is generally used for light and airy cookies. Since baking powder is comprised of a number of ingredients (baking soda, cream of tartar, cornstarch, etc.), using it instead of pure baking soda will affect the taste of your cookies.

What are 3 factors that contribute to a chewy cookie? ›

There are a few things you can try to get soft, chewy chocolate chip cookies:
  • Use a higher ratio of brown sugar to white sugar. ...
  • Use more egg yolks and less egg whites. ...
  • Add a bit of cornstarch to the dough. ...
  • Make sure you're using the right type of flour. ...
  • Don't over-bake the cookies.
May 17, 2018

How to make box cookie mix better? ›

Add different flavors.

Dig around in your pantry or explore the baking aisle and pick out different flavor add-ins that can change up your cookie mix. You could use peppermint, lemon, or almond extract instead of vanilla, dump in plenty of rainbow sprinkles, or even mix in chopped nuts or dried fruit!

What makes sugar cookies tough? ›

Working the dough too much.

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.

What type of flour is used in the chewy cookie Why? ›

Type of Flour: Add Bread Flour

More protein means more chew because and increase in protein directly correlates to an increase in gluten development (aka chew). For most cookie recipes you can swap the all-purpose flour out in favor of bread flour at a 1:1 ratio by weight (always by weight!).

What does brown sugar do in cookies? ›

Brown sugar, meanwhile, is dense and compacts easily, creating fewer air pockets during creaming—that means that there's less opportunity to entrap gas, creating cookies that rise less and spread more. With less moisture escaping via steam, they also stay moist and chewy.

What does baking soda do to gray hair? ›

Gray hair can be affected detrimentally when baking soda is added to it, as the natural oils will become stripped and cause breakage of dry hair due to excessive dryness and brittleness.

What makes cookies cakey vs chewy? ›

The ingredients you use and how you shape your cookies both play an important role in whether your cookies turn out crispy or chewy. The type of flour and sugar you use, if your cookie dough contains eggs, and whether you use melted or softened butter all factor into the crispy-chewy equation, too.

How do you make cookies soft and chewy vs hard and crisp? ›

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.

How do you make cookies stay soft and chewy? ›

Baking at 375 degrees F as opposed to a lower temperature will help cookies stay soft: they'll bake faster which means they aren't in the hot, drying air of the oven too long. Pull the cookie sheet out of the oven when the cookies are just set: underbaking is better than overbaking.

Do you need more or less eggs for chewy cookies? ›

The extra egg yolk helps to add more moisture and richness, for a soft and chewy texture. The other trick is found in the size of the dough ball…. a whole 3 tablespoons in each! This creates larger cookies that spread out perfectly with ultra-soft centers.

How do you make cookies soft and chewy again? ›

Another way to soften cookies is by placing the cookies in an airtight container with a damp paper towel. The paper towel will release moisture and help to soften the cookies without making them too soft or mushy. Another way is to place the cookies in a plastic bag with a slice of apple or a damp tea towel.

Why are my cookies hard instead of chewy? ›

Hard cookies: you are over mixing, baking too long, baking at too high a temperature, or some combination of these. Cakey cookies: not enough brown sugar, too much or too little egg, too much flour, maybe you used baking powder instead of baking soda?

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