Thick, buttery, soft, and sparkly, these gourmet sugar cookies are absolutely perfect. No chilling or rolling required, and they stay soft and tender for days! Recipe includes a how-to video!
Thick & Soft Gourmet Sugar Cookies
Today’s gourmet sugar cookie recipe comes to you via viewer request on my YouTube channel. The assignment? A buttery, thick, and not cut-out sugar cookie. I went with something that didn’t require chilling either. The result? A thicker, bigger, and deliciously gourmet version of my easy drop sugar cookies!
These are super gourmet, huge cookies loaded with vanilla and butter. The kind you’d get from one of those hot pink gourmet cookie shops (but better). They are sweet like a sugar cookie, and when cooked properly, they stay soft and melt-in-your mouth for days. Essentially, gourmet sugar cookie perfection ✨
Why It Works
- Texture: incredibly soft and tender, thanks to cake flour. The granulated sugar exterior adds a lovely crunch that contrasts so nicely to the melt-in-your-mouth interior!
- Flavor: buttery with a distinct vanilla flavor. You can always add a tiny splash of almond extract too.
- Technique: easy! These are drop cookies, so you won’t need to grab a rolling pin or cookie cutters like you’d need for my cutout sugar cookie recipe. All you need is a cookie scoop and a mixer!
- Time: nice and quick, since there’s no chilling required. Just make sure to set out your butter and eggs ahead of time so you are ready to roll.
Ingredients
Less than 10 ingredients! All are pantry staples, but I will briefly review a few before we get started.
- Cake flour. This makes our cookies super soft and thick without drying them out. Do NOT substitute all-purpose flour; I talk more about this in the FAQ section below.
- Sugar. Use granulated sugar in the cookies themselves and a coarser sugar for rolling, like organic cane sugar, sparkling sugar, or even turbinado sugar (it’s a darker sugar and a less traditional choice, but still tastes amazing).
- Vanilla. A hefty pour adds such a lovely flavor to these gourmet sugar cookies. Even better if you use homemade vanilla extract!
- Eggs. Room temperature eggs are best (helps the ingredients incorporate better, giving you a more uniform dough), so try to set yours out ahead of time. If you forget, follow my trick to quickly bring eggs to room temperature.
- Butter. I usually keep unsalted butter on hand, so that’s what I recommend. If you only have salted butter, you can use that and reduce the salt in the recipe to ¼ teaspoon.
SAM’S TIP: While you could roll the dough balls through sprinkles or nonpareils instead of sugar, they won’t have as soft of a texture if you do. Sometimes I will mix ⅓ cup of sprinkles into the dough if I need a sprinkle fix (I still roll the cookies through sugar before baking even when I do this).
Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Gourmet Sugar Cookies
Cream the butter and sugar together until well combined and fluffy. Don’t stop too soon, you want the mixture to look like the picture above (uniform, creamy/fluffy, should feel well inforporatd), which will take several minutes of beating on high speed.
Stir in the eggs and vanilla, then gradually add the dry ingredients until thoroughly combined. Be sure to scrape the bowl with a spatula periodically during this process to make sure there are no dry pockets of flour. Don’t add the flour mixture all at once, or you will have a very difficult, dry dough. It’s very important that you add this gradually!
Scoop and roll the dough between your palms before rolling through sugar. Bake for about 12 minutes, making sure to remove the cookies while still pale…more on this below.
SAM’S TIP: If your dough is too sticky to manage, your ingredients may have gotten just a bit too warm. Cover the bowl of dough and refrigerate it for 15-30 minutes before removing and trying again.
Perfectly Baked vs. Over-baked Cookies
Whatever you do, do NOT over-bake these gourmet sugar cookies! This can lead to dry, cakey results instead of the soft, incredibly tender results we are looking for.
Because every oven is different, I highly recommend baking a test batch of one or two cookies to know exactly how long they will need in your specific oven. Let the cookies cool completely (or at least enough that you can pick them up without them falling apart — they’re fragile when warm!) on the baking sheet, then flip them over to check the bottoms.
Here’s what you’re looking for: pale, but still cooked bottoms with just the slightest bit of coloring happening. Golden brown bottoms do NOT belong here if you want results that stay soft and melt-in-your-mouth. If your cookies are dry or crumbly, you baked them too long!
Tweak as needed after your test batch; shorten the time if they are too golden or increase if they fall apart or seem a bit too underdone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes! I don’t even want to recommend using an all-purpose flour substitute because cake flour really makes a difference; it creates a finer, more tender crumb that works well with a thicker cookie. It makes for such a soft texture!
If you don’t want to buy cake flour, I suggest you try another one of my sugar cookie recipes, like my soft frosted sugar cookies (feel free to roll them in sugar like we do here!).
If your cookies are dry/cakey, one of two things most likely went wrong: either you accidentally over-measured your flour or (more likely) you simply baked the cookies too long/on too high of a temperature.
I highly recommend using a kitchen scale to measure your flour (well really, every dry ingredient) for the most precise results. It’s a game changer in baking and will save you dishes in the long run. If you don’t have a scale, check out my post on how to measure flour the right way.
If you are sure your flour was measured properly, your oven may be running hotter than it indicates, causing your cookies to over-bake. See my section above on properly baked cookies if this is the case!
Yes! Cover it tightly and store in the fridge until ready to use. You may need to let it come to room temperature before scooping if you do this. Also, your cookies will probably be even thicker after chilling–just keep that in mind!
If you want to freeze the dough, follow the instructions for drop cookies in my post on how to freeze cookie dough.
Enjoy, and let me know what you think of them! Did I meet the assignment?!
Let’s bake together! Subscribe to my newsletter to be notified of all the newest recipes, and find my free recipe tutorials on YouTube 💜
Gourmet Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter softened
- 1 ½ cups (300 g) granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs room temperature preferred
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
- 4 cups (455 g) cake flour (all-purpose will not yield the same result but see note to substitute)
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon table salt
- Coarse sugar for rolling (see note)
Recommended Equipment
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F (175C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment), combine butter and sugar and beat until light and creamy (about 2-3 minutes).1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter, 1 ½ cups (300 g) granulated sugar
- Add eggs and vanilla extract and stir until well incorporated, be sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl.2 large eggs, 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
- In a separate medium-large mixing bowl, whisk together cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.4 cups (455 g) cake flour, 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon baking soda, ¾ teaspoon table salt
- Gradually (about a cup at a time) stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until thoroughly combined. Be sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure ingredients are all well-incorporated. Dough will be a bit sticky.
- Scoop dough into 3 Tablespoon (60g) sized scoops and roll between your palms to a smooth ball. Roll through coarse sugar until entirely coated, then transfer to prepared baking sheet, spacing cookies at least 2” (5cm) apart.Coarse sugar
- Transfer to center rack of 350F (175C) oven and bake for 11-13 minutes. Cookies should be quite pale and there should not be significant golden-browning on the edges. Allow cookies to cool completely on baking sheet. Note: I like to bake a test batch and allow the cookies to cool a bit, then flip them over to gauge if I got the timing just right. When you flip the cookie, the bottom should be pale still with only the lightest bit of coloring and they should not be deep golden brown, if it’s golden brown your cookies will be more dry and crumbly than they should be, so check the next batch sooner!
Notes
Cake flour
Cake flour is best for this recipe. If you must substitute all-purpose, you would use 3 ½ cups (440g) of all-purpose plus 2 Tablespoons cornstarch.Sugar
A coarser sugar (like an organic cane sugar) is best in my opinion, but if you don’t have it then regular granulated sugar will work just fine (the sugar coating will just be thinner and less obvious). You may also substitute turbinado sugar (for a richer, more molasses-y flavor and darker color) or you can substitute a colored sanding sugar for fun color.Colorful alternatives
You can stir jimmies/sprinkles into the dough (I do ⅓ cup) for fun color throughout or skip the sugar coating, lightly flatten the cookies immediately after baking, and top with a smear of buttercream frosting.Storing
Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
Lisa in Tx
Love these! My daughter has made this recipe for our family and friends many times now, and made small adjustments to make it her own: vanilla bean paste instead of extract, rubbing orange/mandarin zest into the sugar (both in the cookie and she rolls the dough ball in orange sugar after). People lose their minds— thank you!!
Sam Merritt
Thank you so much for trying my recipe, Lisa! I love the sound of the zest on top. I’m glad you enjoyed them! 🙂
Caitlin
I baked these on a whim for my cookie boxes this year for family, friends and neighbors. It sounded like the type of sugar cookie I was looking for and boy did it deliver. They’ve been earning rave reviews from the recipients. I made them exactly as written, except that since I was making them for cookie boxes, I made them a tad smaller, which netted 26 cookies per batch at about 42 grams each. I rolled half the batch in green sanding sugar and the other half in red sanding sugar. I baked for 8.5 minutes, popped out of the oven to shape into perfect circles before the edges were too set, then popped them back in for 2 minutes to finish. These are super soft, buttery, and satisfying. Thank you so much for this keeper of a recipe!!
Sam Merritt
Thank you so much for trying my recipe, Caitlin! I am so glad everyone enjoyed the cookies so much! 🙂
Julie
These cookies are delicious, everyone in my family loves them.
Sam Merritt
I’m so glad they are such a hit, Julie! 🙂
Amber
Can you freeze these cookies after baking them? If so for how long? Great recipe!! Love them
Sam Merritt
Sure thing! They should be good in the freezer for several months. 🙂