The Best Butter Cookie Recipe For Cookie Cutters (2024)

FAQs

Which butter is best for butter cookies? ›

Unsalted butter is better suited to baked goods like cookies that are sensitive to salt content and rely on butter's creamy flavor profile, helping ensure that you don't end up with an overly-salty baked good.

(In general, you're looking for a smooth dough that can be rolled thin, cuts cleanly and contains little or no baking powder.) If the dough gets too warm, refrigerate or freeze it until it becomes firm again. Your leaf shapes should do just fine.

Sandwich your dough between two sheets of parchment, roll, then freeze; it makes cut-out cookies a breeze! If you plan to store it for only a few hours or days, there's no need to overwrap the baking sheet; for longer storage, wrap the entire baking sheet tightly with plastic wrap before freezing.

Unsalted butter gives you complete control of the overall flavor of your recipe. This is especially important in certain baked goods where the pure, sweet cream flavor of butter is key (butter cookies or pound cakes). As it pertains to cooking, unsalted butter lets the real, natural flavor of your foods come through.

Once it has been rolled to the thickness you're going for, chill the dough for the requisite time. Once the dough has chilled, peel off the top layer of parchment and cut the cookies out of the rolled sheet. But instead of removing the cut-out cookies, simply remove the scraps from around the cut-outs.

Now that you understand how to use a cookie cutter, it's time to make specialty cookies. Just remember to chill your dough for at least 30 minutes and flour your cookie cutter between each cookie. And of course, make them your own and have fun!

Simple metal cookie cutters can transform store-bought slice-and-bake dough into the most festive holiday dessert. For these Christmas cut-outs, all you need is a 16.5-ounce roll of Pillsbury sugar-cookie dough, some flour, and an oven (elbow grease not included).

Mixing Butter & Sugar

If your butter is under mixed, it won't have the air pockets to hold it's shape. If it's over-mixed, the air pockets decrease in size and are unable to hold their shape in the oven—causing your cookies to spread. It's best to cream butter and sugar on medium speed for 2 to 3 minutes.

“The best cookie cutters have a small rolled lip of metal or plastic around the top to protect my hands and give me an edge to grab onto to pull the cutter back up,” Bushman says. “I also look for a nice seam where the metal of the cookie cutter joins together so I don't have a weird shape on one edge of my cookie.”

Do you leave cookie cutters in the oven? ›

To ensure that all nooks and crannies are dry, place the cookie cutters on a clean baking sheet in a warm, turned-off oven for a few minutes. There's also the blow-dryer method, but most of the time the oven is already warm from baking, so it's easy to pop the cookie cutters in. A toaster oven may be used, as well.

A low proportion of sugar relative to flour reduces spread, keeping the cookies thick. A high proportion of mix-ins helps thicken the dough. Blending chocolate chip styles creates a more dynamic flavor. Overnight refrigeration hydrates the flour, again helping the cookies stay thick.

If your cookies repeatedly turn out flat, no matter the recipe, chances are your oven is too hot. Here's what's happening. The butter melts super quickly in a too-hot oven before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure. Therefore, as the butter spreads so does the whole liquidy cookie.

Flour adds fluff and texture to the cookies. Adding too little flour can cause cookies to be flat, greasy, and crispy. Most recipes assume you'll use all-purpose, but if you want a lighter, crumblier cookie texture, choose one with a lower protein content such as cake-and-pastry flour.

It's the very first sweet cream butter. Melted, browned, creamed or clarified, Land O Lakes® Salted Butter is the all-purpose butter that improves the taste of everything it touches. It's the original that never lets you, or your taste buds, down.

“The higher fat content in European butter can produce a richer flavor and a more tender texture in your homemade baked goods, making it the preferred choice for recipes where these qualities are the desired outcome,” she says.