The Ultimate Chewy Sugar Cookie Recipe: Perfected by a Professional Pastry Chef
Welcome to the ultimate guide for creating the most divine chewy sugar cookies you’ll ever taste! This isn’t just any recipe; it’s a meticulously perfected formula, crafted and refined by a professional pastry chef. Imagine biting into a cookie that’s perfectly sweet, wonderfully soft and chewy on the inside, yet boasts delightfully crisp edges. This recipe promises exactly that, using simple, readily available pantry ingredients to deliver bakery-quality results right in your home kitchen.
Years of dedicated testing and a generous amount of sugar were poured into developing this perfectly sweet and chewy sugar cookie. The goal was simple yet challenging: a cookie that was never too flat, never too cakey, and never excessively sweet. During my tenure as a restaurant pastry chef, I often explored new and exciting twists on classic desserts, from innovative fruit cake cookies to an unexpected take on Classic Pumpkin Pie, or even delicious pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies.
However, a recent source of immense joy has been the meticulous art of perfecting simple, beloved childhood classics. No elaborate twists, no unexpected turns – just genuinely outstanding desserts. These chewy sugar cookies represent a part of that ongoing journey, standing proudly alongside cherished recipes like classic yellow cake, fudgy brownies that taste reminiscent of your favorite box mix, and thick, satisfying chocolate chip cookies.
These versatile sugar cookies aren’t just for eating plain. They form the perfect base for incredible ice cream sandwiches when paired with my rich double chocolate caramel ice cream, or they can be stacked high in delightful ice cream cookie stacks. Their comforting taste also makes them a non-negotiable staple during the festive Christmas season, bringing warmth and joy to any holiday spread.
Table of Contents
- Why This is the Best Sugar Cookie Recipe
- Professional Tips for Making Chewy Sugar Cookies
- Ingredients Needed for Perfect Chewy Sugar Cookies
- Variations & Substitutions to Customize Your Cookies
- How to Make Drop Sugar Cookies: Step-by-Step Guide
- Chef Lindsey’s Recipe Tip
- Frequently Asked Questions About Chewy Sugar Cookies
- Chewy Sugar Cookies Recipe
- Before You Go!
Why This is the Best Chewy Sugar Cookie Recipe
What sets these sugar cookies apart from the rest? It’s a combination of balanced flavors and perfect textures, carefully engineered to create an unforgettable treat. Here’s why this recipe will become your go-to:
- Just sweet enough. Achieving the ideal sweetness is key for any sugar cookie. This recipe features the perfect amount of granulated sugar to encourage just the right amount of spreading, develop that desirable chewiness, and ensure a delightful sweetness without being cloying. Unlike overly sugary cookies, these are perfectly balanced, much like my popular thumbprint cookies, allowing the buttery vanilla notes to shine through.
- Crunchy edges & chewy centers. The magic of these drop-style sugar cookies lies in their exceptional texture contrast. They spread just enough during baking to create slightly crispy, golden-brown edges that provide a satisfying crunch. Meanwhile, the centers remain wonderfully soft and chewy, never underbaked, offering a delightful chew in every bite. This textural harmony is a hallmark of a truly great cookie.
- Easy to make ahead & bake from frozen. Life can be hectic, but that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying fresh-baked cookies. This recipe is incredibly convenient for meal prepping. The dough is easy to prepare, roll into balls, and then freeze for future baking sessions. When a craving strikes, or unexpected guests arrive, you can bake these cookies directly from frozen, ensuring a warm, delicious treat with minimal effort. This makes them ideal for busy holidays or spontaneous dessert needs.
Professional Tips for Making Perfect Chewy Sugar Cookies
Achieving that coveted soft and chewy texture with a satisfying bite is all about understanding the science of baking. As a professional pastry chef, I’ve honed these key principles to ensure consistently perfect chewy sugar cookies:
- There is a high ratio of sugar to butter. This is fundamental for chewiness. Sugar plays multiple roles: it sweetens, tenderizes, and contributes to spread. A high sugar content relative to butter helps retain moisture, which is crucial for a soft interior. Too little sugar might result in a drier, more cake-like cookie, while an excessive amount can cause the cookies to spread too much and become overly crisp. The precise balance in this recipe ensures ideal moisture retention and structure.
- Under-creaming the butter and the sugar will prevent too much air from being trapped in between the particles, thus creating a thicker, chewier cookie. When butter and sugar are creamed extensively, they whip air into the mixture, leading to a lighter, more cakey texture. For these chewy sugar cookies, you want to beat just until a paste forms and the mixture is light in color but not excessively fluffy. Using cold but pliable butter (not rock hard, not melted) is essential for achieving this optimal texture, allowing for proper emulsification without over-aeration.
- The perfect ratio of flour to butter and sugar. Flour provides the structural backbone of the cookie. Too much flour will result in a dense, dry, or cakey cookie because of increased gluten development and reduced moisture. Conversely, too little flour will cause excessive spreading, leading to thin, crisp cookies. This recipe utilizes a specific ratio that balances structure with moisture, ensuring thickness without sacrificing chewiness. For example, my snickerdoodles have a slightly higher flour proportion to achieve their signature thicker, yet still chewy, texture.
- Too much moisture. An often-overlooked factor, additional liquid can dramatically alter cookie texture. Even a seemingly small amount of extra moisture can transform a chewy cookie into a cakey one. For instance, just adding ½ cup of buttermilk or milk to a soft cut-out sugar cookie recipe can shift them from flat, no-spread, and chewy to distinctly soft and cakey. This recipe carefully balances moisture from the egg and milk to achieve the desired chewiness without leaning towards a cake-like consistency.
Ingredients Needed for Perfect Chewy Sugar Cookies
These chewy sugar cookies rely on a handful of common pantry staples, but understanding the role of each ingredient is crucial for consistent success. Here’s what you’ll need and why:
- Granulated Sugar: Granulated sugar is undeniably essential for sweetness, but its role extends beyond taste. In baking, sugar is a tenderizer and affects spread. As mentioned in our professional tips, a precise amount of sugar relative to butter and flour is crucial. Too much can cause excessive spreading and crispness, while the right amount ensures the cookies stay thick and chewy, with just enough spread to develop those delightful crunchy edges.
- Butter: For baking, I always recommend unsalted butter, as it gives you complete control over the total salt content in your recipe. The butter’s temperature is critical: it should be cool but pliable. This means you should be able to bend a stick of butter without it snapping or melting in your hands. This specific consistency is vital for proper creaming, preventing over-aeration, and ultimately contributing to the thick, chewy texture of the cookies.
- Whole Egg: The whole egg serves multiple functions in this recipe, acting as a binder, adding fat, and contributing leavening. The fat from the egg yolk enhances the richness and plays a significant role in keeping the cookies wonderfully chewy. Beating the egg just enough (not excessively) helps to introduce a controlled amount of air, contributing to the cookie’s rise and texture. Eggs also help emulsify the batter, creating a smooth, cohesive dough that bakes into a perfectly structured cookie. Eggs ensure everything comes together texturally.
- Whole Milk: Only a small amount of milk is used, but it’s precisely the right quantity to bring the dough together without making it tough or overly moist, which could lead to a cakey texture. Whole milk is preferred for its higher fat content, which contributes to a richer flavor and helps maintain the cookie’s tender chewiness.
- Vanilla Extract: Vanilla Extract is the backbone of flavor in these classic chewy sugar cookies, imparting a warm, inviting aroma and taste. For an added layer of complexity and a unique twist, you could even experiment with a touch of almond extract, similar to how I use it in my moist vanilla cake recipe.
- All-purpose flour: All-purpose flour is the ideal choice for these cookies because it contains just the right amount of gluten. This gluten structure is essential for creating cookies that are soft, yet hold their shape and have that satisfying chew without becoming overly dense or tough.
- Baking Powder: We use double-acting baking powder in this recipe. This means it reacts twice: once when it comes into contact with liquid (an acid, though not prominent here, it activates with moisture) and again when heated in the oven. This two-stage reaction provides a consistent lift, contributing to the cookies’ thickness and ensuring they remain beautifully chewy. Notably, we avoid baking soda to achieve this specific thick and chewy texture. Baking powder is key.
- Kosher Salt: Kosher salt is preferred in baking because it’s less salty by volume than table salt and its larger crystals dissolve more evenly. A quarter teaspoon of kosher salt weighs less than the same amount of finer ground salts. Here, it acts as a flavor enhancer, balancing the sweetness and preventing your chewy sugar cookies from tasting dull or flat. It brings out the depth of the other ingredients.
Variations & Substitutions to Customize Your Chewy Sugar Cookies
While this chewy sugar cookie recipe is perfect as is, it also serves as an excellent canvas for customization. Feel free to get creative and tailor them to your preferences or the occasion:
- Funfetti: You absolutely can, and I highly encourage you to, add sprinkles to this recipe! These cookies are utterly fantastic with sprinkles. Use classic rainbow sprinkles for a joyful, everyday treat, or customize them for specific holidays. Think festive blue and white sprinkles for Hanukkah, or vibrant red, white, and blue for a Fourth of July celebration. Add up to a ½ cup of your favorite sprinkles to the dough as written for a burst of color and fun.
- Brown Sugar: Ever considered a brown sugar cookie? It sounds absolutely delicious, doesn’t it? Swapping some or all of the granulated sugar for brown sugar will introduce a deeper, more caramel-like flavor and an even softer, chewier texture due to brown sugar’s molasses content. It’s a key ingredient in many of my recipes, including my indulgent triple chocolate chip cookies, so you know it adds a wonderful dimension!
- Alternative milks: This recipe calls for whole milk, primarily for its fat content and the richness it contributes. However, you can absolutely use any milk or milk alternative you have on hand. The amount used in the recipe is quite small, so the flavor impact of an alternative milk will be negligible. Feel free to use almond milk, soy milk, oat milk, or any other preference without significantly altering the outcome of your chewy sugar cookies.
- Add a frosting. While these chewy sugar cookies are delightful on their own, they are also a perfect base for your favorite frosting. Elevate them with a spread of tangy cream cheese frosting, or try my specific cream cheese frosting for cookies, which is formulated for a firmer set. A classic American buttercream, colored with food coloring for a festive touch, is always a crowd-pleaser. For a bright, zesty twist, my lemon buttercream frosting would also be an incredible pairing!
How to Make Drop Sugar Cookies: Step-by-Step Guide
Follow these detailed instructions to create drop sugar cookies that are perfectly chewy and soft, with those irresistible crispy edges. More precise measurements and additional details are always available in the comprehensive recipe card below.
Summary of steps:
Step 1: In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, and salt. Whisking ensures they are evenly distributed, preventing pockets of leavening or salt in your cookies. Set this mixture aside for later.
Step 2: Using the paddle attachment in the bowl of a stand mixer (or a large bowl with a hand mixer), cream the cool but pliable butter and granulated sugar together. This step is crucial for texture; beat just until the mixture is light in color and resembles a paste, avoiding over-creaming which incorporates too much air. Add the whole egg and continue to beat until it is fully incorporated and the mixture is smooth and well combined.
Step 3: Pour in the whole milk and vanilla extract. Beat these wet ingredients thoroughly until they are well combined with the butter, sugar, and egg mixture. This ensures all the liquid components are evenly distributed throughout the dough, contributing to uniform moisture and flavor.
Chef’s Insight: Adding the milk and vanilla before the flour mixture is a deliberate technique. This limits the amount of gluten created during the subsequent mixing process with the flour. Less gluten development contributes to a more tender and chewy cookie, rather than a tough one.
Step 4: Reduce your mixer speed to low. Gradually add the whisked dry ingredients to the wet mixture in three separate additions. After each addition, wait until almost all the flour has been incorporated into the dough before adding the next batch. This technique ensures even mixing without overworking the gluten, which is key for maintaining the chewy texture of your sugar cookies. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed to ensure everything is fully combined.
Step 5: Once your dough is ready, use a large cookie scoop to portion out the dough, or roll it into uniform balls approximately ¼ cup in size (for precision, aim for 45g per cookie). This ensures consistent baking. Now comes a critical step for chewy cookies: chill the dough before baking for at least 2 hours. This firms up the butter, preventing excessive spreading and promoting a thicker, chewier cookie. For even better results and future convenience, freeze the dough balls!
Baking Myth Debunked: Many sources suggest that “bigger is better” or that “more dough leads to chewier cookies.” I’m here to tell you that with the right recipe, this simply isn’t true. In our bakery, we sell two different sizes of this exact same cookie. One is a smaller 30g portion (less than an inch across), and it still bakes perfectly chewy. The key is to manage your bake time carefully, not necessarily the size of the dough ball!
Step 6: Preheat your oven to 325°F convection. If you don’t have a convection oven, set it to 350°F standard bake. Convection ensures more even heat distribution and a slightly faster bake, contributing to those desirable crispy edges.
Step: 7: Arrange the chilled or frozen cookie dough balls on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, leaving enough space between them for spreading. Bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes. Look for visual cues: the edges should be a lovely golden brown, the centers of the cookies will have puffed up slightly, and the surface should appear matte rather than shiny. These are all indicators of a perfectly baked, chewy sugar cookie. Once baked, you can cool them completely on a wire rack or allow them to cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring.
Do be careful not to overbake! While perfectly baked cookies are deliciously chewy, the same recipe can quickly become dry and lose its desired texture if left in the oven for too long. Keep a close eye on those visual cues for the best results!
Chef Lindsey’s Recipe Tip
Baking, especially with precise results like chewy sugar cookies, is often more of a science than an art. The success of this recipe truly hinges on the careful balance and ratio of sugar to butter to flour. Each ingredient plays a critical role in achieving the desired chewiness, spread, and overall texture. Therefore, I cannot stress enough the importance of measuring your ingredients accurately. Use a kitchen scale for best results, or at least level your measuring cups and spoons meticulously. Precision in pastry yields perfection!
Frequently Asked Questions About Chewy Sugar Cookies
While rolling some sugar cookie varieties in extra sugar before baking adds a sparkly finish and a sweet crunch, I found that for this specific chewy sugar cookie recipe, it’s a bit too much. The recipe is already perfectly balanced for sweetness and texture. Adding an additional coating of sugar can make them cloyingly sweet and potentially alter the desired chewiness. Yes, there can indeed be such a thing as too much sugar!
To extend the freshness and chewiness of your sugar cookies, consider these tried-and-true methods. My grandmother swore by storing her chewy cookies in a plastic baggie with a slice of fresh bread; the cookies absorb moisture from the bread and amazingly stay soft longer! Alternatively, for long-term storage, placing chewy cookies in an airtight container and freezing them will preserve their soft, chewy, and flavorful qualities for up to a month. For shorter periods, storing them in an airtight container at room temperature will keep them fresh for up to a week, though they will gradually lose some of their initial chewiness over time.
Baking these cookies from frozen is incredibly convenient and yields fantastic results! Simply preheat your oven to 350°F (standard bake) or 325°F (convection), and place the frozen dough balls directly on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes. You’ll know they’re done when the edges have just begun to turn a light golden brown, the centers have visibly puffed up, and the surface looks matte rather than glossy or shiny. There’s no need to thaw the dough beforehand!
Absolutely, these chewy sugar cookies are excellent for shipping! Their robust yet tender structure makes them quite resilient. For best results, package them carefully in a decorative tin, layering with parchment paper to prevent sticking, or simply place them in a zip-top bag inside a sturdy mailer box. They maintain their quality for about 10 days at room temperature, and impressively, they stay wonderfully chewy for almost that entire duration. A little tip: larger cookies tend to retain their chewiness for a longer period during transit!
Yes, chilling the cookie dough is a non-negotiable step for these chewy sugar cookies, especially since we use cool but pliable butter. Because the butter is softened during the creaming process, the dough needs to chill for at least 2 hours before baking. Skipping this step will result in cookies that spread too much, becoming thin and crispy rather than thick and chewy. Chilling allows the butter to re-solidify, creating a firmer dough that spreads less in the oven, leading to those desirable thicker, chewier cookies.
If you tried this recipe for chewy sugar cookies and absolutely loved them, please take a moment to leave a 🌟 star rating and share your experience in the comments section below. Your feedback truly makes my day and helps other bakers discover these fantastic cookies!
Chewy Sugar Cookies
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Ingredients
- 1 ⅓ cups Sugar
- ½ cup Butter softened
- 1 whole egg
- 1 tablespoon whole milk
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
Instructions
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Cream butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat well.
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Add milk and vanilla and beat well.
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Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Reduce mixer to low and add dry ingredients in three additions, waiting until almost all the flour has been incorporated before adding the next.
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Scoop with a large cookie scoop or roll in to balls about ¼ cup size. Chill dough before baking.
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Preheat oven to 325°F convection
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Place on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake in preheated oven 10-12 minutes until the edges are a nice golden brown, the centers have puffed and the surface looks matte not shiny.
Video
Notes
Variations – Add up to ½ cup sprinkles to this recipe.
Technique – The butter should be soft but cool to the touch for the chewiest cookies.
Substitutions – Substitute your favorite alternative milk for the whole milk.
Storage – These chewy sugar cookies will keep up to 10 days at room temperature or several months frozen. I prefer to store them frozen.
Nutrition
Before You Go!
I sincerely hope you enjoyed mastering this professional chef-tested recipe for perfect chewy sugar cookies. My goal is always to empower home bakers with the knowledge and techniques to create exceptional desserts. If you’re looking to expand your baking repertoire, be sure to explore all our 250+ incredible cookie recipes, each crafted with the same dedication to flavor and texture. Or perhaps you’d prefer to challenge yourself with one of our professional cake recipes, designed to impress. Happy baking!