The Thickness Tip To Remember To Ensure Perfect Sugar Cookies

What's better than the smell of fresh-baked cookies? Nothing! Well, maybe the taste of fresh-baked cookies. Top those delectable desserts with bakery-worthy, gorgeous icing designs, and you have a batch of cookies that looks just as good as it tastes. And of all the many kinds of crave-able cookies, classic, buttery sugar cookies with royal icing are one of the most famous, not to mention the most beautiful. Timeless, sweet, and full of possibilities, sugar cookies are a hallmark of the baking world for their signature flavor and versatility.

Baked with warm butter, velvety vanilla, and of course, sweet sugar, sugar cookies are a tasty treat loved by pastry chefs and home bakers alike. But there's one surefire way to ruin sugar cookie perfection: the wrong thickness. The perfect sugar cookie dough thickness is around a quarter-inch, depending on your preference for a crispy crunch or tender chew in a cookie. If you roll the dough too thin, your sugar cookies will come out brittle and breakable; too thick, and you'll end up with a gooey, under-baked mess on your cookie sheet. But carefully rolled, quarter-inch-thick cookies turn out just right every time.

Whether spicing up your sugar cookie recipe with lemon zest or brown butter, it's essential to achieve the right thickness for optimal texture and durability. A flimsy, crumbly cookie won't hold up as you coat it with sugary icing, but a hard-as-a-rock, overly tough cookie won't be worth all that effort when you break a tooth trying to enjoy it. The quarter-inch thickness ensures a sugar cookie that's soft enough for a wonderfully satisfying bite, but firm enough to be handled during the decorating process. Plus, this cookie thickness supports ample icing to create the most beautiful designs.

For a perfectly pretty treat, start with a great sugar cookie recipe. First, mix all of the ingredients into a dough-licious base. You can even try adding a bit of cornstarch to the dough for extra firmness and stability. Don't forget to let your dough rest in the fridge before rolling it out – giving the gluten time to relax and the butter time to harden will make it easier to place the shaped cookie dough, and result in a better texture once baked. After letting your dough chill, flour a kitchen surface, then use your hands to gently press the dough flat enough to easily roll. Next, flour your rolling pin, and roll out the dough to a quarter-inch thickness, making sure it's smooth and even all over. You'll have sugar cookies that are perfect for flooding with gorgeous royal icing designs, then devouring, of course!