Sourdough Sugar Cookies [cut out + decorate]
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These simple sourdough sugar cookies make the perfect sourdough cookies to decorate for all occasions. You can use your sourdough discard to make these sweet sourdough cookies and they're a delicious way to get the kids involved in sourdough baking too! These sourdough discard sugar cookies are soft cookies with a lovely soft interior, but you can make them with slightly crispier edges too (which is how I love to eat them).
Why You'll Love This Recipe
Fermented Dough - Using sourdough discard doesn't alter the flavor of the cookie too much, although if you choose to ferment the dough a bit longer, they will have a lovely tangy flavor.
Perfect for the Holidays - You can make these fit pretty much any holiday celebration, from Christmas to Easter and anything in between!
If you love sourdough cookies, why not try these amazing sourdough chocolate chip cookies, sourdough gingerbread cookies, sourdough snickerdoodle cookies or these sourdough oatmeal cookies.
Ingredients
- All Purpose Flour
- Baking Powder - not to be confused with baking soda.
- Salt
- Granulated Sugar
- Butter - soft butter is best, it doesn't matter whether it's salted or unsalted butter. Leave it out at room temperature well before you want to use it.
- Egg
- Vanilla Extract - you can use vanilla extract or almond extract (I like to add both just because I'm a little extra).
- Sourdough Starter - you can use active starter or unfed sourdough starter (discard). It's really up to you and what you have on hand. For this recipe, I recommend you use sourdough discard that isn't more than a week old because you don't want sour cookies. Ideally, use sourdough discard that's not more than 24 hours old for this recipe. You can of course use fed, active sourdough starter too!
How To Make Sourdough Sugar Cookies
This sourdough sugar cookie recipe uses minimal ingredients to create a delicious sourdough cookie - perfect for gifting or filling up the cookie jar on your kitchen counter. I recommend using a kitchen scale for this recipe (as I do with all sourdough baking recipes) because weighing ingredients is more accurate.
I love to make this dough and then let my boys cut out the shapes. It's a simple way to get the kids involved in sourdough baking. If you'd prefer not to cut out the shapes, you might like to make this as sourdough sugar cookie bars.
Start by whisking together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl, then set it aside while you cream the softened butter and sugar until light and fluffy — a hand mixer works great, but a stand mixer makes it effortless. Beat in the egg, vanilla, and sourdough starter until smooth, then add the dry ingredients and mix gently on low speed or with a wooden spoon. The trick is not to over mix — stop as soon as the dough comes together softly. Divide the dough into two balls and roll each one between sheets of parchment until about ½ cm (¼ inch) thick.
A rolling pin works best here. Transfer the sheets to a baking sheet (flat cookie sheets without edges work best) and chill them in the fridge. If space is tight, stack them — and for the best flavor and texture, let the dough rest in the refrigerator overnight or up to 48 hours.
When ready to bake, preheat your oven to 175°C (350°F). Cut your chilled dough into shapes — keeping it cold helps the cookies hold crisp edges instead of spreading. Arrange them on a lined tray with about 5 cm (2 inches) of space between each.
Reroll any scraps between parchment if needed, chilling briefly if they get too soft. Bake for 10–12 minutes, watching closely — you want golden edges and pale centers for soft cookies. Let them cool on the tray for five minutes before transferring to a rack. Once cooled, have fun decorating — try royal icing for piping, fondant cutouts for a clean look, or a simple glaze topped with colorful sprinkles.
Kate's Recipe Tips
- If at any point the dough seems too soft to work with, just put it back in the fridge. Don't leave cookies that have been cut out on the counter. If you need to set them aside before you bake them, pop them back into the fridge.
- You do not have to ferment this dough. You can roll the dough out and place into the fridge for just one hour to firm up before you cut the cookies. However, the option is there to leave the dough in the fridge for up to 48 hours of cold fermentation. The sourdough flavor will develop more if you leave the dough to ferment in the fridge.
How To Decorate Sourdough Sugar Cookies
These cookies are simple to cut into whatever shape you like. Hearts and stars are really simple shapes to cut out and can be decorated very simply. These soft sourdough sugar cookies are perfect for Christmas, Valentines, Thanksgiving or even Easter!
I have used very simple cookie cutters to create circles and stars and then rolled out fondant and cut shapes one size smaller than the baked cookies to create a very simple but effective decoration. If you are great with detail, you could try your hand at piping the icing onto these cookies. Pinterest is a great place to look for inspiration for decorating sugar cookies.
Some other ideas are:
- leave the cookies plain and serve on a fruit platter with this spiced pumpkin cream cheese or whipped strawberry cheesecake dip.
- dip the cookies in a simple glaze then top with your favorite chocolate chips or sprinkles.
- sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar before baking for a very simple, tasty topping.
- make your favorite cream cheese icing and smear it onto the cooled cookies.
How To Store + Freeze
Baked and iced cookies will last for around 5 days in an airtight container. I prefer to store them in glass as plastic will make them too soft too fast.
This dough is fine to freeze. I find the easiest way is to cut the cookies into the shapes, snap freeze on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and then pop the unbaked cookies into a zip loc bag. You can then place the frozen cookies onto cookie sheets when you are ready to bake.
You can bake them from frozen, they will just take an extra few minutes to bake through. Store cookie dough in the freezer for up to 6 weeks.
Frequently Asked Questions
You can use brown sugar instead of white sugar, however the texture and flavor of the sugar cookies will be different. The cookie will be softer than usual and harder to decorate if you use brown sugar.
You can mix this dough in a number of ways:
- use an electric hand mixer (I find this is the most convenient way to do it).
- use a stand mixer (this way you can also bring the dough together in the stand mixer using the paddle attachment).
- mix everything by hand (you'll need your muscles to cream the butter and sugar together).
- use a Thermomix (speed 4 is fine to cream the butter and eggs, use dough mode to bring the dough together).
Yes you can flavor these cookies. I've added vanilla to these cookies, but you can use a different extract if you want to. Some alternatives would be almond, peppermint, lemon or orange. They also work well with a teaspoon of cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice added too!
Sourdough Sugar Coookies
Equipment
- Cookie Cutter
Ingredients
- 260 g All Purpose Flour
- 3 g Baking Powder
- 2 g Salt
- 150 g Granulated Sugar
- 170 g Unsalted Butter softened
- 1 Egg
- 5 g Vanilla Extract (or almond extract)
- 100 g Sourdough Starter or sourdough discard
Instructions
- Add all purpose flour, baking powder and salt to a mixing bowl and whisk together until well combined. Set this aside.
- Add the butter and sugar to a mixing bowl and cream them together using a hand mixer until they are light and creamy (you could also do this in a stand mixer if you prefer).
- Add the egg, vanilla extract and sourdough starter to the butter and sugar mixture and beat on medium speed until well combined.
- Now, add the wet mixture to the dry ingredient mixture and combine into a soft dough (use low speed on hand mixer or stand mixer or wooden spoon). Don't over mix the dough, it needs to just come together.
- Divide the mixture into two balls and place each ball between two sheets of parchment paper.
- Use a rolling pin to roll each ball of dough into a "sheet" of dough around half a centimetre thick (¼ inch). Place each sheet of dough onto a flat cookie sheet and place them into the fridge. If you don't have room, just stack the two sheets on top of each other.
- Allow the dough to sit in the fridge overnight if you can (up to 48 hours).
- When you are ready to bake the sourdough sugar cookies, preheat the oven to 175C (350F).
- Take one sheet of dough out at a time and cut the cookies out with a cookie cutter (see notes for how to deal with excess dough). Place the shaped dough onto the cold cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. You want to leave around 5 cm (2 inches) between each cookie.
- Place the cookies into the oven for 10 to 12 minutes (watch them closely). You don't want them to brown too much.
- Take the cookies out of the oven and allow them to sit on the tray for around 5 minutes before placing them on a wire rack to cool completely.
- You can decorate these cookies however you'd like. Royal icing is great if you want to pipe a design on. The white stars and pink circle cookies in these photos have been decorated using fondant icing which I rolled out really thing and cut to the same shape. The cookies with sprinkles were topped with a glaze and then dipped in sprinkles.
Notes
- Half Teaspoon Baking Powder
- One Quarter Teaspoon Salt
- Two Teaspoons Vanilla Extract
- use an electric hand mixer (I find this the most convenient way to do it)
- use a stand mixer (this way you can also bring the dough together in the stand mixer using the paddle attachment).
- mix everything by hand (you'll need your muscles to cream the butter and sugar together).
- use a Thermomix (speed 4 is fine to cream the butter and eggs, use dough mode to bring the dough together).
Nutrition
![Sourdough Pumpkin Grissini [sourdough breadsticks]](https://www.pantrymama.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/SOURDOUGH-PUMPKIN-GRISSINI-1-768x1152.jpg)
These were delicious and melt in your mouth!
I may have done something wrong but the dough was incredibly sticky even after an overnight refrigeration. I had to put them back in the fridge 3-4 times through the process and eventually gave up on cutting shapes and just did balls and smooshed them with a flat cup.
Thank you for the delicious recipe!
I did use the recipe with a couple of changes. Instead of butter, I used margarine and raw tahini - 1/2 a cup of margarine and 1/4 cup of raw tahini. With no mixer, I used a stick blender attachment and then kneaded it all to bring it together, with my hands.
I rolled the dough out between two sheets of parchment paper and placed in the refrigerator for 24 hours. I cut out cookies and gathered the excess dough. I then rolled the excess dough into round balls and with a small glass, dipped in a bit of oil and granulated, white, sugar, I pressed down on the tops and embedded the granulated sugar.
This yielded two sheets. The other sheet of rolled dough is still in the fridge. The cut-out cookies were a bit too brown and of uneven height. The round balls came out very uniform, so for me, that's my preferred method.
Thank you.
Have you ever made these with whole wheat flour?
Just wondering if the dough can be rolled into a log and after proofing could just be cut into 1/4th inch round cookies?
Could you share what you used for the glaze with the sprinkles? I’m looking for a light glaze that doesn’t effect the taste of the cookie.
Thanks
I rolled out the dough and left it in the fridge for almost a whole day, and it was still too soft and sticky to handle. I pressed the cookie cutters in, scraped the excess dough from around them and removed them (albeit carefully as the dough stuck to those too), and made a third layer with the leftover dough before putting it all back in the fridge for another night. You'd think with 1 1/2 sticks of butter they'd be pretty solid but it seems discard can behave too much like a liquid sometimes. Hopefully I'll be able to bake them tomorrow; otherwise I may just bake solid sheets of cookie and crumble it all up for piecrust.
Great recipe!! Works so well.