Recipe for soft-baked and chewy sprinkle sugar cookies.
I have several “go-to” base cookie recipes in my archives. From those base cookie recipes, you have the luxury of creating many spin-off cookies using the same dough. For example:
- My chocolate chip cookies recipe is perfect for different add-ins.
- My peanut butter cookies recipe is wonderful plain or with chocolate chips!
- My cutout sugar cookies recipe is the inspiration for chocolate sugar cookies.
- And my salted caramel dark chocolate cookies recipe recently won a Nestle baking contest.
And now we have a basic drop style sprinkle sugar cookie recipe!
How to Make Sprinkle Sugar Cookies
The ingredients are simple. You need baking soda and cream of tartar to lift these cookies. Cream of tartar is a “power ingredient” in snickerdoodles, too. If cream of tartar is unavailable, try them with baking powder instead. To do so, follow my drop sugar cookies recipe.
The recipe makes a small batch and can easily be doubled for a large family, get together, or party. You’ll bake about 15 decent sized cookies from 1 batch. Just enough to place in your cookie jar.
There’s room for a ton of sprinkles. The dough is thick enough to hold a fair amount of the good stuff. In my recipe testing, I found that sugar cookie dough can be overly greasy, making it hard to incorporate sprinkles. Not these – they’re the perfect soft pillow for a magnitude of sprinkles.
I am quite certain that nothing compares to sinking your teeth into a soft, chewy sugar cookie. The cookies are so tender, they will melt in your mouth.
Print
Soft-Baked Sprinkle Sugar Cookies
- Prep Time: 2 hours, 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 12 minutes
- Total Time: 2 hours, 45 minutes
- Yield: 15-16 large cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
My absolute favorite recipe for soft-baked, chewy sprinkle sugar cookies. There won’t be a crumb left!
Ingredients
- 1 and 1/2 cups (188g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup (115g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 3/4 cup (150g) granulated sugar
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup (80g) sprinkles, plus more for topping*
Instructions
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.
- In a large bowl using a hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and granulated sugar together on medium-high speed until creamed, about 1 minute. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat on high speed until combined, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and up the bottom of the bowl and beat again as needed to combine.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low until combined. Beat in 1/2 cup of sprinkles. Dough will be thick and sticky. Scoop large sections of dough (about 2 Tablespoons of dough each) and roll into balls. If desired, lightly dip the tops of the cookie dough balls in more sprinkles. Place dough balls onto a large plate or lined baking sheet.
- Cover and chill the cookie dough balls in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours (and up to 4 days).
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
- Arrange chilled cookie dough balls 3 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake for 11-12 minutes or until lightly browned on the sides. The centers will look very soft.
- Remove from the oven and allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead Instructions: You can make the cookie dough, roll into balls, and chill the dough balls in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. (See note about cookie dough chilling.) Cookie dough balls freeze well for up to 3 months. Bake frozen cookie dough balls for an extra minute, no need to thaw. Read my tips and tricks on how to freeze cookie dough. Baked cookies freeze well for up to 3 months.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Glass Mixing Bowl | Whisk | Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Baking Sheet | Silicone Baking Mat or Parchment Paper | Cooling Rack
- Room Temperature Butter: Here’s my trick to soften butter quickly. Works every time.
- Sprinkles: Any sprinkles are great, but I recommend avoiding nonpareils (the little balls) as they tend to bleed their color in cookie dough and cake batter.
- Chill Cookie Dough: Chilling the cookie dough is imperative. These cookies are very buttery and the colder the cookie dough, the less your sugar cookies will over-spread. The cookie dough can get a little hard after 2 hours in the refrigerator, so I recommend rolling the dough into balls before chilling. Here are all of my tips to prevent cookies from over-spreading.
See more sprinkle recipes.
See more cookie recipes.
Can I make them without the sprinkles
Hi Michael, absolutely—simply omit the sprinkles.
Hi!! These were SO delicious! I made them for a special Valentine’s treat for my kiddos. Question for you- I chilled the dough balls overnight and they still spread quite a bit. They were very flat as opposed to the plush ones I see in your picture! What do you think I can do next time to prevent this? Thank you so much!
Hi Kelly, so glad your kids enjoyed these cookies! Your butter may have been a bit too warm to start, which caused the cookies to overspread. This post on how to prevent cookies from spreading will be helpful to review, too. Thank you for giving this one a try!
Made these for the Super Bowl and the kids devoured them! The adults loved them as well! I added a capful of cake batter extract. Delicious!
Cute cookies and yummy too. Simple recipe which is always a plus. Taking these to a cookout tomorrow.
Great recipe! I used gluten free flour and they still came out delish 🙂 Very buttery, soft and sweet. I was able to get about 17 cookies out of the recipe. They are also so colorful and pretty to look at!
I made these today and they turned out amazing! My whole family loved them and I can’t wait to make them again. Best part is they don’t require a ton of ingredients and are not hard to make at all. So delicious! 10/10 🙂
I am allergic to eggs is there something I can use in place of eggs?
Hi Janet, We haven’t tested this recipe with an egg substitute, but let us know if you try anything. Here are all of our egg free recipes if you are interested!
should i use baking powder, cream of tartar, and baking soda? I read in your other post for Drop-Style cookies that using baking powder is to substitute cream of tartar, so I was surprised to find all three agents in this recipe
Hi Hannah, This recipe has all 3. Here is this same sugar cookies recipe using baking powder instead of baking soda/cream of tartar.
I’m making these for a women’s event at my church tomorrow and want to make more cookies without doing a double batch. Was thinking of scooping out 1.5 tablespoons of dough instead of the 2 tbsp listed in the recipe. What would the recommended bake time be for smaller cookies?
Hi Amanda! The bake time will be very slightly shorter, so just keep an eye on them in the oven! Cookies are done when lightly browned on the sides.
Never tried this kind of cookies , but it seems so delicious “Soft-Baked Sprinkle Sugar Cookies”. Thanks for sharing this one with us . Will love to try this one
I made these 7 years ago for my brother in law and he still talks about them to this day lol
So tasty!
These are so good and fun. I made them this time with my 1 Tbs scoop for a smaller size, and they took about 9 minutes. They do come out better in the larger size, the smaller ones are quite thin despite being in the fridge overnight- but still a good proportion to the diameter of that makes sense. But that size is better for school lunches for me! Still delicious!