Easy Sugar Cookie Recipe – Oma's Zuckerkekse (2024)

FAQs

How to improve Pillsbury sugar cookies? ›

Mix in tasty ingredients

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. This is our favorite hack for holiday Pillsbury cookie dough.

But if you roll the dough out too thick, then they won't cook through and become dense and, honestly, pretty gross. The ideal thickness to roll out your sugar cookie dough is about 1/4"--that way, they'll be tough enough to be handled and decorated, but thin enough to stay a little crunchy.

Baking soda encourages spreading while baking powder puffs the cookies up. If your recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of baking soda, you would use 3 to 4 teaspoons of baking powder. Caution: This could result in an unwanted flavor shift.

Sugar sweetens the cookies and makes them an enticing golden brown. Adding too little sugar can affect the taste and texture of cookies. Adding too much can cause them to be brittle. Take your time creaming the sugar and butter together at the beginning.

Some premade cookie dough can have a processed, almost chemical-like aftertaste, but you can mask it by adding extra flavor extracts to your dough. You can use a splash of vanilla extract or try other variations, like almond extract or mint extract, to change up the flavors of your cookies.

Bake cookies on parchment paper: Sometimes greasing a baking sheet can cause sugar cookies to spread. Instead, use parchment paper to prevent sticking and help the cookies keep their shape. Don't let the dough get warm. Notice the dough needs to be chilled for at least 2 hours.

If you enjoy your cookies soft and chewy, chances are likely the recipe contains a common ingredient that serves a very specific purpose. No, it's not granulated sugar, nor the butter. It's not the egg, all-purpose flour, or even the vanilla extract. The simple, yet oh-so-necessary component is cornstarch.

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.

Chilling cookie dough helps prevent spreading. The colder the dough, the less the cookies will over-spread into greasy puddles. You'll have thicker, sturdier, and more solid cookies. Whenever I make cookies, I plan ahead and chill the cookie dough overnight.

Why do my sugar cookies turn into blobs? ›

If the oven's hot enough, the fat melts before the cookies set. And since their flour/liquid matrix hasn't yet had a chance to harden, the cookies spread – becoming those dreaded cookie blobs.

Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.

The primary purpose of vanilla extract is to add flavour to baked goods. Lacking it, baked goods tend to have a bland and boring taste. Vanilla extract can also contribute moisture to create a soft and fluffy texture.

Option 1: bake the sugar cookie dough according to the directions on the package. Then dip an end in melted chocolate and M&M's. Option 2: Make 1 inch dough balls and press them down with a cup to make flat sugar cookies. Press M&Ms directly into the cookie dough and bake as usual.