Favorite Almond Sugar Cookies Recipe

4.66 from 20 votes

These rollout sugar cookies are soft, thick, and my favorite to decorate for Christmas, Valentine's Day, Halloween, or just a Tuesday! Whether you frost them with buttercream, royal icing, or just add sprinkles, you'll love the light almond flavor in every bite!

Prep Time10

Cook Time10

Total Time20

Course: Cookie

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Almond Sugar cookies, roll out sugar cookies, soft sugar cookies

Servings: serving

Calories: 147kcal

Author: Mindee

Cost: 15

Ingredients

2 Cups Butter room temperature (2 Cups of Butter is 4 sticks)
3 Cups Powdered Sugar
2 Eggs
2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
2 teaspoon Almond Extract
5 Cups Flour

Instructions

In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and powdered sugar.
Beat in the eggs, vanilla, and almond extracts.
Stir in the flour. The dough will still be sticky at this point.
Cover and refrigerate for an hour.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and prepare baking sheets by either lining them with parchment paper or spraying them with non-stick cooking spray.
Roll the cookie dough out on a floured surface.
The dough may be a little sticky at first; just sprinkle the top of the dough so the rolling pin doesn't stick.
Roll out to ¼ inch thick and cut out in desired shapes.
If you are going to sprinkle the cookies with sanding sugar instead of frosting, do so before baking, pressing the sanding sugar down onto the dough slightly to make them stick.
Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes. Larger cookies may take longer.
The cookies shouldn't brown except for on the very bottom edges very lightly.
Cool completely before frosting.
Store in an airtight container with wax paper in-between the layers of cookies.

Notes

I've had a few people end up with crumbly dough. I've never been able to replicate the problem myself, but thanks to a reader, it's been suggested that perhaps some are firmly packing the flour in the measuring cup instead of scooping without packing. In baking, you NEVER firmly pack flour.
These sugar cookies are delicious on the first day but are absolutely perfect after sitting overnight.
Butter - do not substitute anything for the butter. Butter is important to the flavor of these cookies. If you were to substitute, say, margarine for the butter, your cookies would taste like margarine, and I'm not gonna lie, it will not taste good. Both unsalted butter and salted butter work fine.
Powdered Sugar - Please note that this cookie recipe calls for powdered sugar aka confectioners' sugar instead of granulated sugar. Granulated sugar makes a crumbly, grainy dough and will not work for this recipe.
Extracts - Do you need both extracts? If you're out of vanilla, that's fine, but the almond extract is very important to this recipe. It makes these sugar cookies more flavorful.
Flour - all-purpose flour, never self-rising flour.
Frosting - I frost my cookies with this Buttercream Frosting but you can frost them with Royal Frosting as well. If you don't want to frost them, you can sprinkle sanding sugar or coarse sugar on the tops of the dough cutouts before baking. You will need to lightly press the sprinkles down to get them to stick to the cookies.
Nutritional Disclaimer

Nutrition