Grandma's Sour Cream Sugar Cookies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What happens if you add too much sugar to sugar cookies? ›

Sugar sweetens the cookies and makes them an enticing golden brown. Adding too little sugar can affect the taste and texture of cookies. Adding too much can cause them to be brittle. Take your time creaming the sugar and butter together at the beginning.

Flavor Twist: For a punchier twist, swap the water in the sugar cookie mix instructions for rum, bourbon or coffee liqueur. Or if you're cooking for kiddos, try using freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice instead. You'll get the same fun flavor without the booze.

What happens if you increase the amount of sugar called for in cookies? Conversely, when you increase the sugar in cookies, you'll get cookies that spread more and have an ultra moist and chewy texture in addition to a sweeter flavor.

Cream of tartar makes cookies chewy, as it precludes the sugar in the dough from crystalizing, which would lead to crispiness (ie: the opposite of chewiness).

But most importantly, let's talk about the end results. The cookie with all white sugar spread a lot more, and it was crispy around the edges, whereas the one with brown sugar didn't spread as much. and was a lot denser in the middle. And I feel like the biggest difference here, other than color, was in taste.

Too much baking powder can cause the batter to be bitter tasting. It can also cause the batter to rise rapidly and then collapse. (i.e. The air bubbles in the batter grow too large and break causing the batter to fall.) Cakes will have a coarse, fragile crumb with a fallen center.

Add sour cream

Stir 3/4 of a cup to one cup of full-fat sour cream in with your cookie mix, butter and egg. Sugar cookies will bake up with a wonderfully soft, cake-like texture. (Here's why it works!)

To avoid this, try using as little flour as possible while preparing to roll your dough. Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.

It is not recommended to substitute powdered sugar for granulated sugar. Since powdered sugar has a much finer texture, and it contains a small percentage of cornstarch to prevent caking, substituting can give you unexpected results.

What is the best sugar to use in cookies? ›

Brown sugar makes my sugar cookies spread thin and keeps my oatmeal cookies from spreading at all; it makes both of them extra chewy. It also adds flavor to my crispy gingersnaps. White sugar turns my oatmeal cookies crisp and thin, and keeps my sugar cookies soft and thick.

Baking powder is a good cream of tartar substitute for cookies because it is synergistic with baking soda. You'll need 1.5x the amount of baking powder substitute for the cream of tartar called for in the recipe. Baking powder is a great cream of tartar replacement because it doesn't impart any flavor.

Cookies. Cornstarch does kind of incredible things to cookies. I mean not only does it give them soft centers, prevents them from spreading, and makes them somewhat thick (in a good way), but it also contributes to the chewiness factor, which, in my opinion, is the most important cookie attribute.

You can also simply leave out the cream of tartar from a recipe, which may result in baked goods that are not as fluffy, but will still work out and taste good.

If your dish is a little too sweet, try rounding out the sweetness by adding flavors or ingredients that are sour, bitter, or spicy. It may be obvious not to add more sweet ingredients, but you should also stay away from salty ones since they actually bring out the sweetness in food.

Sugar creates tenderness in baked goods by weakening the gluten structure (proteins in flour). Adding too much sugar can weaken the gluten structure in a cake to the point that it may collapse.

Over time, this can lead to a greater accumulation of fat, which may turn into fatty liver disease, a contributor to diabetes, which raises your risk for heart disease. Consuming too much added sugar can raise blood pressure and increase chronic inflammation, both of which are pathological pathways to heart disease.

You might need to preheat for up to 20 minutes to ensure you hit 350 F by the time the cookies actually go in. By the way, butter isn't the only thing that melts when you bake it. Sugar does, too. So cookies with a lot of sugar in them will tend to spread more than ones with less sugar.