3 Ingredient Sugar Cookies
on Nov 30, 2025
These 3 Ingredient Sugar Cookies can be made so quickly. They have a bit of crunch on the outside and soft on the inside. The recipe can be made into cutout sugar cookies, decorated or left as a simple round cookie.
The holidays are always quite busy. Having a quick and easy cookie recipe like this 3 Ingredient Sugar Cookie recipe is great when time is something we are short on. This cookie is great year round too.
If you are looking for other easy cookie recipes try my 3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies or No Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies.
Serve these easy sugar cookies with just 3 ingredients as is, they are simply delicious. Go ahead and dust the tops with sugar, add sprinkles, frost with a Buttercream Frosting, or use my Cookie Icing That Hardens to make them a decorated cookie. Whichever way you serve them, your family will love them.
I know this a 3 ingredient recipe but, I suggest adding either a teaspoon of almond extract or vanilla extract to amp up the flavor.
Our 3 Ingredient sugar cookies can be made into a round sugar cookie or the dough can be rolled for easy cutout sugar cookies. If you are rolling the dough, I highly suggest placing the dough between two pieces of parchment paper like I do in my No Chill Sugar Cookies. This will allow you to not have to add additional flour to the cookie dough which dries the cookie out.
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If you plan to coat the cookie in sprinkles, add before baking and be sure to lightly press them into the dough. Your sugar cookies will need to cool before adding frosting or additional decorations. Let them cool.
3 Ingredients for Sugar Cookies
Just fridge and pantry staple ingredients for this Simple Sugar Cookie Recipe today. We’ve got a few optional ingredients if you want to spice them up and add a bit more flavor but, really, you can make Sugar Cookies with 3 Ingredients! Here’s what you need:
- Butter – You’ll want softened butter to make this cookie recipe easier. Cold butter doesn’t mix as well. Use room temperature butter.
- Sugar – Plain white granulated sugar works here. Some raw sugar or natural sugar might bring some extra flavors. You can also use a 50/50 blend of white and brown sugar.
- Flour – Keep things simple by using all purpose flour for this recipe.
Those are the only 3 ingredients you need for sugar cookies. If you’re willing to make this a 4 ingredient recipe or a 5 ingredient recipe, we recommend adding in some almond or vanilla extract and sprinkles or jimmies.
See recipe card for quantities.
How to make Sugar Cookies with 3 Ingredients
Thankfully, like most 3 ingredient recipes, these homemade sugar cookies are so easy to make! All those cookie dough ingredients come together real quick and they bake in the oven pretty fast too. To make these 3 Ingredient Easy Sugar Cookies for yourself, here’s a step-by-step recipe guide with plenty of pictures:
- To a medium-to-large mixing bowl, add butter and sugar. Use a hand or stand mixer to cream butter and sugar together until fluffy, light, and combined. If adding almond or vanilla extract, add it here as well.
- Gradually add flour to creamed butter and sugar while mixing frequently.
- Everything should eventually come together into a consistent sugar cookie dough. If needed, use hands to work dough into a ball.
- Pinch cookie dough off and shape into 1-1/2 inch balls. Set on parchment-lined baking sheet while you roll sugar cookie dough into cookie dough balls.
- If coating sugar cookies with extra sugar, add optional sugar to a small bowl. Drop cookie dough ball into bowl and roll around until evenly coated in sugar.
- Return coated sugar cookie dough ball to baking sheet. Repeat with remaining sugar cookie dough balls until all are coated.
- Now press cookie dough balls gently to flatten. If you have a flat-bottom measuring cup made of metal, it’s perfect for this.
- If adding sprinkles, evenly distribute over flattened sugar cookies, optionally giving another light press to set sprinkles in. Transfer baking sheet to preheated 325 degree oven. Bake for 15 minutes or until cookie bottoms become golden-brown. Let cool before serving.
Storage / Freezing
Storage: Transfer leftover sugar cookies to an airtight container for storage. On the counter, at room temperature, you should expect sugar cookies to last up to a week. Keep sugar cookies in the fridge and you can stretch that out to 1-2 weeks.
Freezing: Frozen sugar cookies will last much longer, if you need long-term storage. Consider freezing on a parchment lined baking sheet for at least 45 minutes to “flash freeze” before moving to a freezer bag or container. After freezing sugar cookies, expect them to last 3 months in the freezer.
Tips for the 3 Ingredient Sugar Cookies
- Use softened butter but, not too softened and greasy.
- Do not OVER-MIX the sugar cookie dough. Mix just until you see no more white flour. Over mixing will cause a tough cookie that will not taste good.
- If you have almond or vanilla extract on hand, add a teaspoon of one or the other to this sugar cookie, it will add the extra flavor.
- If making cutout cookie dough, place the dough between two pieces of parchment instead of flouring the work surface or rolling pin. The additional flour will dry the cookie out.
- Do not over bake. Pull the cookies from the oven when you first start to see slight browning on the bottoms. Remember, the cookie continues to bake on the cookie sheet after being removed from the oven.
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3 Ingredient Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup Butter, softened
- 2/3 cup Sugar
- 2 cup Flour
- 1 tsp Almond Extract, optional or Vanilla Extract
- 1/4 cup Sugar, optional
- 2 tbsp Sprinkles, optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325.
- Line baking sheet with parchment paper or silicone mat and set aside.
- Cream together butter and sugar in a medium bowl until fluffy and combined.
- Add flour (and almond or vanilla, if using) and mix well.
- Use your hands to bring dough together into a ball.
- Shape into 1 1/2″ balls and place on prepared sheet.
- If you are using optional sugar, dip each ball in sugar and return to baking sheet.
- Press each ball gently with the bottom of measuring cup to slightly flatten.
- If you are using optional sprinkles, evenly distribute over cookies.
- Bake for 15 minutes until golden on the bottom.
- Allow to cool.
Notes
- Use softened butter but, not too softened and greasy.
- Do not OVER-MIX the sugar cookie dough. Mix just until you see no more white flour. Over mixing will cause a tough cookie that will not taste good.
- If you have almond or vanilla extract on hand, add a teaspoon of one or the other to this sugar cookie, it will add the extra flavor.
- If making cutout cookie dough, place the dough between two pieces of parchment instead of flouring the work surface or rolling pin. The additional flour will dry the cookie out.
- Do not over bake. Pull the cookies from the oven when you first start to see slight browning on the bottoms. Remember, the cookie continues to bake on the cookie sheet after being removed from the oven.
Nutrition
