The best butter cookies are rich vanilla cookies made with two sticks of butter and a single egg yolk, dipped in crunchy turbinado sugar. That makes them an easy Christmas cookie for a cookie exchange or a gift tin. You can drop them or slice them from a chilled log, and the batch makes 36.
Roll the log at an inch and a half across, not the one inch the recipe asks for. A one inch log holding all this dough would run about 45 inches long. Half inch slices off it would give you 90 small cookies, not 36.
The card says 45 minutes from start to finish, yet step one tells you to chill the dough for an hour. Those cannot both be true, so count on an hour and three quarters in total.
The Best Butter Cookies
Course: DessertCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy4
servings30
minutes40
minutes300
kcalButter and sugar whipped light, bound with a yolk and a little flour, then chilled and either scooped or sliced. Each cookie gets a crunchy cap of raw sugar before baking.
Ingredients
- For the Cookies:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 sticks (16 tablespoons) good-quality unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- For the Tops:
1/4 cup turbinado sugar
Directions
- Whip the butter: Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl. Beat the butter and granulated sugar in a stand mixer on high for a full 2 minutes, scraping the bowl halfway, until the butter is very light and almost white.
- Finish the dough: Add the egg yolk and vanilla and beat on medium until combined. Add half the dry ingredients on low, scrape the bowl down, then add the rest and mix just to combine.
- Chill: For drop cookies, cover the bowl and refrigerate 1 hour. For slice and bake, shape the dough into a log about 1 1/2 inches across, roughly 18 inches long, wrap it and chill the same hour.
- Shape and sugar: Heat the oven to 350 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment. Put the turbinado sugar in a small bowl. Scoop tablespoon balls and dip the tops in the sugar, or cut the log into 1/2 inch rounds and press the tops into the sugar.
- Bake: Space them on the lined sheet and bake about 15 minutes, until slightly puffed and lightly golden underneath. Let them firm on the sheet for a minute, then cool on a rack.
Notes
- The original asks for a 1 inch log, which would need to be about 45 inches long to hold this dough and would give 90 cookies. Roll it at 1 1/2 inches. It also lists a 45 minute total while its own first step chills for an hour.
FAQs
Egg yolk or whole egg?
The ingredient list says one large egg yolk and the method just says add the egg, which is not the same thing. Go with the yolk. The white brings water and protein, which turns a short butter cookie into something more like a sugar cookie.
Why beat the butter a full two minutes on high?
There are only five real ingredients here, so the air you beat in is doing the work that eggs and leavening do elsewhere. Two minutes on high is long enough to turn the butter pale and almost white. Stop short and the cookies bake dense.
Should I drop them or slice them?
Dropping is faster and the tablespoon scoop gives you the 36 cookies on the card. Slicing gives neater, flatter cookies with a sharper edge, which look better in a gift tin. The dough itself is identical either way, so pick by the look you want.
What is the turbinado sugar for?
Its crystals are too large to melt, so they stay crunchy on top and give a plain butter cookie some texture. Only the tops are dipped, so a quarter cup goes a long way. The same raw sugar coating shows up on these molasses cookies.
How long do they keep?
Two weeks in an airtight tin, since there is almost no moisture in them to go stale. The unbaked log freezes for three months and slices from frozen. Keep them like these Danish butter cookies, flat and separated by parchment.
