The best cut out sugar cookies I have eaten came off a dented sheet pan in a restaurant with eleven seats, on the Lunenburg waterfront, in December. Nine of those seats were taken. I got the one at the end of the counter, next to the till.
The owner was a lobster fisherman named Delmar who ran the place in the off-season with his daughter. There was no printed menu, just a chalkboard with three things on it and the price of coffee. I had been eating fried haddock for most of a week, so I was not expecting the cookies at all.
A Tin of Cookies on the Lunenburg Waterfront
His daughter did most of the talking. Delmar talked in a low Nova Scotia mumble that I caught maybe half of, and she filled in the rest, and between the two of them I got the whole method in about four minutes.
He pulled a tin out from under the counter and set it next to my coffee without asking. Stars, a few trees, one lopsided fish shape that was clearly somebody’s idea of a joke. The icing was hard enough that they had been stacked between sheets of wax paper and nothing had smudged.
Then he opened the restaurant fridge and showed me two flat discs of dough wrapped in plastic, cold and firm as hockey pucks. He tapped one with a knuckle and said something I did want to catch, and his daughter repeated it for me. Cold dough, sharp corners.
That was the entire lesson. Everything else I worked out later at home.
Where Cut Out Sugar Cookies Actually Come From
I assumed this was an old European thing. It mostly is not, at least not in the rolled and stamped form we know. The direct ancestors are English jumbles and sugar biscuits, simple sweetened doughs of flour, butter and egg, often perfumed with aniseed, coriander, fennel or nutmeg, and sometimes baked firm enough to hang on a Christmas tree as an ornament.
The American version is credited to German-speaking Moravian settlers who founded Nazareth, in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, in the mid-1700s. They built a round, crumbly butter-and-sugar cookie out of the cheapest pantry staples they had, with a dough stiff enough to roll thin and cut into shapes. Amelia Simmons put a sugar cookie in print in 1796, in her Hartford book, and told bakers to roll it, cut it and bake it slowly.
After that it spread fast. The Boston Globe ran a dairy-free, baking-powder version in 1885, Pillsbury was selling refrigerated sugar cookie dough nationwide by the late 1950s, and in 2001 Pennsylvania legislators actually moved to make the Nazareth sugar cookie the official state cookie, with a delegation hauling 350 of them to Harrisburg to make the case.
Worth saying what these are not. Not shortbread, which carries far more butter, usually no egg and no leavener, so it comes out denser and sandier. Not gingerbread, which leans on molasses for its stiffness and its flavour. And definitely not the thick pastel-frosted supermarket discs, which are a soft, cake-like sour-cream cookie that has never met a rolling pin.
What I Used
- All-purpose flour, spooned and leveled, plus more for the board
- Baking powder
- Fine sea salt
- Unsalted butter, softened to cool room temperature and no warmer
- Granulated white sugar, and nothing else, see below
- One whole egg plus one extra yolk, both at room temperature
- Vanilla extract
- Confectioners’ sugar, sifted
- Meringue powder, or egg whites if you prefer
- Fresh lemon juice
- Warm water, plus more for thinning
- Coloured sanding sugar or sprinkles, optional
Rolling Them Out in My Kitchen
I make these on a Sunday morning, early, because the icing needs the rest of the day to dry and I would rather not be piping at midnight. The kitchen smells like almost nothing while the butter and sugar come together, which always feels like a bad sign. Then the egg and the yolk and the vanilla go in and suddenly it smells like a bakery.
Stop the mixer the second the flour disappears. The dough should be stiff and smooth and a little reluctant. I overworked it the first time and got cookies that were tough in the middle and vaguely blobby at the corners, which taught me more than any instruction would have.
The chill is not for flavour. It is structural. The butterfat has to re-solidify and the flour has to hydrate, and that is the only reason a star comes out of the oven still looking like a star. I skipped it once in August because the house was already hot and I was impatient, and the trees fused into one large green continent.
I roll with a tapered French pin, no handles, bought secondhand for four dollars, and I will not use anything else now. Quarter inch thick, cut the shapes close together, and stop after two roll-outs. Each re-knead warms the butter and tightens the gluten. I say two maximum. I did three last weekend because I wanted six more stars.
Bake until the edges are just set and barely golden while the centres still look pale. They firm as they cool, and the smell at that point is warm butter and vanilla with a faint toasted edge. Cool them completely before any icing goes near them, because warm cookies melt royal icing and you get bleeding colour and a lot of swearing.
On icing. Buttercream tastes better and royal icing is the only one that dries hard enough to stack, box, gift or hang, so royal icing wins on every practical ground. I get my meringue powder from a cake supply shop on a side street near the flower district, the kind of place that sells piping tips in bins. Thin the flood icing until a ribbon drizzled off the spoon sinks back in about twelve seconds, outline first, flood second, toothpick for the bubbles.
Nutmeg, Sanding Sugar and the Plainer Nazareth Style
Half a teaspoon of ground nutmeg, mace or crushed aniseed in the flour gives you something much closer to the old Pennsylvania Dutch note, and I like it better than plain vanilla most years. If you want the older, simpler version, skip the icing entirely, brush the unbaked shapes with beaten egg and scatter coloured sanding sugar over the top. That is the version I actually prefer eating, though it photographs like nothing.
Do not swap in brown sugar. The extra moisture and acidity make the dough spread and soften the crisp edge that defines the whole cookie. These are the Christmas sugar cookies I bake for the one December week I am reliably home, with the rain hitting the kitchen window and something scratchy playing on the speaker.
Delmar never wrote anything down for me and I never asked him to. I just remember the sound of his knuckle on that cold disc of dough, which turned out to be the only part that really mattered. Everything after is patience and a steady hand.
Cut Out Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together into a bowl and set aside.
- Beat the butter and granulated sugar on medium speed for 2 to 3 minutes, until pale and light but not fluffy and airy. Scrape the bowl down once.
- Add the whole egg, the egg yolk and the vanilla. Beat 30 seconds, just until smooth.
- Add the flour mixture in two additions on low speed. Stop the moment no dry streaks remain. The dough should be stiff and smooth. Overworking it now gives tough, blobby cookies.
- Divide the dough in two, press each half into a flat disc about 1 inch thick, wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least 1 hour. The butterfat has to re-solidify and the flour has to hydrate, and this is the only reason your shapes will hold.
- Heat the oven to 350 F and line two baking sheets with parchment.
- Working with one disc at a time, roll the dough on a lightly floured board to an even 1/4 inch thick. Lift and turn it once or twice so it does not stick.
- Stamp out shapes with cookie cutters, cutting them close together. Lift them onto the lined sheets, spacing them 2 inches apart. Gather scraps, press them together, chill briefly and roll once more. Stop after two roll-outs.
- Chill the cut shapes on the sheets for 10 minutes while the oven finishes heating. If you want sugared rather than iced cookies, brush them now with a little beaten egg and scatter coloured sanding sugar over the tops.
- Bake one sheet at a time for 8 to 10 minutes, until the edges are just set and barely golden and the centers still look pale. They firm as they cool.
- Let the cookies sit on the sheet 3 minutes, then move them to a wire rack and cool completely. Icing warm cookies will melt and bleed.
- For the royal icing, beat the confectioners' sugar, meringue powder, lemon juice and 6 tablespoons warm water on low, then raise to medium-high and beat 4 to 5 minutes until thick, glossy and holding stiff peaks.
- Transfer about a third of the icing to a piping bag fitted with a small round tip. Thin the rest with water a teaspoon at a time until a ribbon drizzled off the spoon disappears back into the surface in about 12 seconds.
- Pipe a stiff outline around each cooled cookie, then flood the inside with the thinned icing, nudging it to the edges with a toothpick. Pop any air bubbles.
- Leave the cookies undisturbed at room temperature for 6 to 8 hours, or overnight, until the icing dries hard to the touch and the surface no longer dents. Only then are they ready to stack, box or hang.