Holiday Cut-Out Cookies

Author Notes

This is my mother’s recipe. She’s a stickler for details, which plays to her advantage when it comes to baking. Her cut-out cookies are always the thinnest and prettiest and have the most restrained amount of decoration. Contrary to the plump and pale versions you often see, cut-out cookies should be very thin with browned edges, so they’re crisp and nutty!

This recipe was re-tested and revised in January 2022, based on helpful feedback from the community. We hope you give these a try again and let us know how it goes! —Amanda Hesser

Test Kitchen Notes

There's no better time to make cookies into fun, festive shapes than the holidays. Keep in mind that this recipe makes a lot of dough, so much so that you can make up to 80 cookies, depending on how you shape them, of course. But we say the more cookies, the better! It's definitely an ideal time to host a cookie decorating party, but you can halve or quarter the recipe if you don't anticipate on making this many cookies. Yes, the recipe calls for 1¼ pounds of butter as well as 4 cups of sugar and 8 cups of all-purpose flour. With pantry ingredients and lots of optional add-ins, you'll soon discover that this will become your go-to sugar cookie recipe. And what better way to use up all those baking ingredients you have lying around?

One of the keys to these cookies is making sure that they're very thin, so about ⅛ inch thick, when you're rolling out the dough. This results in the best texture by far and will make cutting and shaping them easier. The best part is that you can make these cookies well ahead of time. Amanda, the developer, made them for the holidays, then stored them in a container with a tight-fitting lid, and was then able to eat the cookies for Easter, four months later, and they were still as good as the day she made them. Pretty amazing, right? So go ahead and bake and shape as many cookies as your sweet-lovin' heart desires. —The Editors