No Spread Sugar Cookies (Perfect Cut Out Cookies)

❤️Why you will love this recipe

• This is an easy sugar cookie recipe with simple ingredients.
• This classic sugar cookie recipe makes delicious buttery sugar cookies with crisp edges and soft, crumbly centers. You can also make chewy cookies by reducing the baking time.
• It makes the best sugar cookie recipe for cut-out cookies. You get perfect cookies with perfect shapes and are absolutely perfect for decorating every single time.
• The cookies are great for decorating with royal icing, fondant and glaze icing or sugar cookie icing.
• The cookies don’t lose their shape when baking. Whatever size you put on your baking tray before it goes into the oven comes out perfectly in the exact same size and shape you put it in. This really helps when decorating the cookies with fondant. You can use the same cookie cutter to cut both the cookies and the fondant.

Like this easy no spread sugar cookie recipe? Here are my other posts you might want to check out:

• Snowflakes Sugar Cookies
• Christmas Wreath Cookies
• Gingerbread Boys and Girls Cookie Tutorial
• Chocolate Heart Cookies for Valentine's Day
• Daisy Cookies (Flower Cookies with Royal Icing)
• Heart Sugar Cookies with Fondant
• Strawberry Jam Cookies (Sandwich Cookies)

📋Ingredients

• All purpose flour - sift the flour to break any lumps.
• Granulated sugar (caster sugar) - fine sugar works best for this cookie recipe. Coarse white sugar will leave specks of sugar marks on the surface of your cookies after baking.
• Butter - I use salted butter to make these cookies. If you are using unsalted butter, add one eighth (⅛) teaspoon of fine salt when creaming the butter and sugar. For easy creaming, use room temperature butter (but not too soft that it is not able to hold its shape). Cold butter will be take a longer time to cream.
• Egg - Helps to bring the ingredients together into a soft dough.
• Vanilla extract - gives the cookies a lovely aroma and flavor.

🧾Substitution and variations

• Cookies flavor variation:
  • Lemon no spread sugar cookies - omit vanilla extract and add in 1 tablespoon of freshly and finely grated lemon rind. Alternatively, replace the vanilla extract with lemon extract.
  • Orange no spread sugar cookies - omit vanilla extract and add in 1 tablespoon of freshly and finely grated orange rind.
  • Chocolate no spread cookies - reduce the flour by 50 grams and add 50 grams of cocoa powder. Sift the cocoa powder with flour before adding into the creamed cookie mixture.
  • Coffee no spread cookies - mix 1 teaspoon of instant coffee powder with a few drops of hot water until dissolved. Add into the batter before adding in the flour.
  • Almond no spread cookies - replace the vanilla extract with almond extract.

Preparing the oven and the tray

• Start by preparing your baking tray. Line them with parchment paper or cookie sheets and pre-heat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius.

Mixing the dough

• Place the softened butter and castor sugar in a medium or large bowl. Beat these with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed until they turn light and creamy. Suffice if the mixture turns creamy. Do not beat until it's fluffy.
• Next, add the whole egg and continue beating until it's well incorporated. Scrape the sides of the bowl so that the ingredients are all well combined. Again, do not over beat the mixture. Suffice if the egg traces are no longer visible.
• Add in vanilla extract and give the mixture a quick mix.
• At time point, if you would like to change the flavor of your cookies to lemon, coffee, or orange, add in the orange or lemon zest or coffee at this stage. Omit the vanilla extract.
• Finally, add in the flour into the wet ingredients. You can add this all at once or in batches, both ways are fine. Mix on low speed the dough until it comes together.

Chilling the dough

• To stabilize the dough, form it into a ball, cover with a plastic wrap and refrigerate it for about 15 minutes. 15 minutes is all you need. If you keep it too long in the fridge, it will become too hard to work with and you would need to leave it at room temperature and wait for it to soften before rolling and cutting it.
• For best results and perfectly cut out, no spread sugar cookies, the dough should be chilled until its firm but still workable.

Rolling and cutting out

• Divide the dough into sections so that it is easier to work with. Place it between 2 sheets of parchment paper and roll with the guide of 2 dowel rod on either side for even thickness (my cookies have about a quarter inch thickness). Remove the top piece of parchment paper and cut the rolled dough into desired shapes with cookie cutters.
• Lift the cutout sugar cookies and place them onto your cookie sheet or baking sheet. Since the cookies do not spread, there is no need to put them too far apart. Suffice if you leave about 1 cm gap between each of the cut-out cookies for easy handling.

Chilling the cut out cookies

• Once the tray is full, pop it into the fridge again to allow the cut out no spread cookie dough to chill and firm up. Anytime between 15-20 minutes is sufficient.
• Remove the tray from the fridge and bake cookies for about 10-15 minutes (depending on the size of your cookies) until they have turned golden brown. Your actual time would very much depend on the size and thickness of your cookies. I prefer my cookies to have crisp edges, so I cook them for about 10 to 15 minutes. If you prefer soft, chewy cookies, take them out of the oven slightly earlier.

🍽️Serving & storage

• Remove cookies from the oven and cool them on a cooling rack or wire rack. Let them cool down completely before frosting or decorating them.
• Keep the cookies in an airtight container.

💡Expert tips

• To ensure you can uniform thickness for all your cookies, place dowel rods on either side of the dough and roll it with the rolling pin resting on the sticks on either side of the rolling pin. Also make sure you roll the dough on a flat surface. That way, the thickness of the rolled cookies will be uniform all over and so would your cookies, after cutting them out.
• If you wish to make larger and thicker cookie, you would typically need to increase your bake time. Similarly, if you make smaller cookies, reduce the bake time accordingly.
• Chill the cut out cookies before baking for perfect results. This is the key step to making no spread sugar cookies. Place the cutout cookie dough onto a tray and refrigerate them until they are firm, before popping them into the oven. That way, the cookies will come out in the exact shape you put them in.

💭FAQs