The BEST Soft & Chewy Vanilla Sugar Cookies.
A good friend of mine asked if I would make tennis ball cookies for her daughter’s graduation party this last May.
Adorable, right? I love how decorated sugar cookies look. I just don’t generally like how they taste. Too often, sugar cookies are hard and dry, and either shockingly sweet or tasting a little bit like cardboard. I wanted to make sugar cookies that were soft, chewy and buttery, and bursting with vanilla and a hint of lemon.
After a few attempts, these addictive little cookies are the result. They almost melt in your mouth. The combination of butter and cream cheese produces a cookie that is super flavorful with a dense, chewy texture. Also, instead of creaming softened butter with the sugar (the case in most cookie recipes), I whisked melted butter with the sugar so that they would be ultra-tender.
These vanilla sugar cookies have a way of disappearing at an alarmingly fast rate at my house.
Case in point: Last night, I made 3 dozen because we were watching our nieces and nephews (ages are 5, 4 and 2) for a few hours and every little kid loves cookies. I told them they could have as many as they wanted and when they went home there were exactly zero left over. (I am not above bribing kids to love me with cookies.) Bake a batch to share and I think you’ll have a similar experience.
Eat these plain and unadorned (my preference), or frost and decorate at will.
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Soft and Chewy Vanilla Sugar Cookies
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Pin RecipeIngredients
- 4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 cups granulated sugar
- 4 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
- 12 tbsp butter, melted
- 2/3 cup vegetable oil
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tbsp milk
- 4 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp lemon extract
Instructions
- In a medium size bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and set aside.
- In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the sugar, melted butter, vegetable oil and softened cream cheese on high for 60 seconds.
- Add the eggs, milk, vanilla and lemon extract and beat for 30 seconds longer, until well combined.
- Swap the whisk attachment for the paddle attachment on your mixer and add the dry ingredients, mixing on low just until it forms a moist dough. (Or, use a wooden spoon.)
- Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment, foil or a non-stick baking liner.
- Roll tablespoon-size balls of dough in your palms, roll them in some additional granulated sugar, place on the baking sheet and flatten slightly.
- Bake for 10 minutes. The trick here is to take them out of the oven when they are just slightly underdone. They should look mostly set, and just slightly golden around the edges, but the centers will look a bit underdone.
- Cool on a wire rack.
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These looks absolutely scrumptious. The photos are amazing as well.
★★★★★
Thanks so much! If you try them, let me know how they come out! xoxo