Sourdough Sugar Coookies

A photo of 3 sourdough sugar cookies that have been decorated to look like little pink donuts.

Easy recipe for sourdough sugar cookies that can be iced or decorated. Use up your sourdough discard to create these special sourdough sugar cookies that are perfect for holiday gifting.

Course Dessert, Snack

Cuisine American

Keyword Sourdough Discard

Prep Time 1

Cook Time 12

Fermentation Time 1

Total Time 1 1 12

Servings cookies

Calories 61kcal

Author Kate Freebairn

Equipment

Cookie Cutter

Ingredients

300 g All-purpose Flour
3 g Baking Powder
2 g Salt
165 g Granulated Sugar
160 g 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 the bowl of a stand mixer cream them together using the whisk attachment until they are light and creamy.
Add the egg, vanilla extract and sourdough starter to the butter and sugar mixture and whisk on medium speed until well combined.
Now, add the wet mixture to the dry ingredient mixture and combine into a soft dough. I usually just do this with a wooden spoon or spatula as it gets stuck in the stand mixer attachment. Don't over mix the dough, it needs to just come together.
Divide the mixture into two balls, wrap each in parchment paper and place into the fridge for at least 2 hours, although this dough can be fermented up to 48 hours.
When you're ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 175ºC (350ºF).
Using a rolling pin, roll each ball of dough into a "sheet" of dough around a 1/4" thick.
Use a cookie cutter to cut out your desired shapes, placing them onto parchment lined cookie sheets. You'll want to leave around an inch inch between each cookie. Re roll the excess dough and cut out shapes until you have no dough left. If the dough becomes soft, pop it back into the fridge to firm up.
Place the cookies into the oven for 10 to 12 minutes (watch them closely). You don't want them to brown too much.
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 (there's a recipe for this on my sourdough gingerbread cookie recipe). 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.

Notes

EXCESS COOKIE DOUGH - Once you've cut out the shapes from a sheet of dough, you can gather up the excess dough and re roll it to cut more cookies. If the dough is too soft, roll it out again between 2 sheets of parchment paper and pop in the fridge for 10 minutes to firm up.

SOFT DOUGH - 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.

FREEZING COOKIE DOUGH - 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 cookie dough shapes 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.

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