Sugar Cookie Recipes

This is one of Martha's favorite sugar cookie recipes. When she makes the classic buttery cookies, she likes to add one tablespoon of cognac alongside the egg and vanilla, after creaming together the butter and sugar. These treats are delicious plain—or you can decorate them with icing and sprinkles to make them festive for celebrations.

If you're decorating cookies using our royal icing for sugar cookies and have a compromised immune system, we recommend instead using meringue powder, found in the baking aisle of most markets, instead of raw egg whites.

Perfect for any festive occasion, these sugar cookies are a blank canvas for decorating and cutting into any shape you desire. The dough can be made the night before, then decorated the following day. All you need is some royal icing and a little creativity to make stunning cookies. If you're looking for a homemade food gift or have a cookie swap coming up, Martha's sugar cookie recipe is a good place to start. 

These large cookies have a classic lemony flavor, a chewy texture, and glistening, crackly tops created with a double sprinkling of sanding sugar.

Classic sugar cookies take baking back to basics. But in their simplicity lies their perfection: It's hard to beat the delicate flavor of cookies with only the most elemental of ingredients. We veered from tradition a little by adding sour cream for softness and candied citrus for zest. This recipe appears in our cookbook "Martha Stewart's Cookie Perfection" (Clarkson Potter).

Get out your cookie cutters! As its name suggests, this sugar cookie recipe is ideal for making cutout cookies for Christmas, Easter, or any other holiday or occasion that calls for shaped sweet treats.

Buttery classic, sugar cookies make a delicious treat anytime. Here, Martha heightens them to special-occasion status with a simple glaze and a fanciful combination of candied flowers, crystallized ginger, and chopped pistachios.

Use this recipe for sugar cookie cutouts, adapted from "Martha Stewart's Cookies," to make adorable Santa Cookies (pictured) or charming One-Piece Cookies, a perfect treat for baby showers.

Start filling up your cookie jar with those popular treats.

Rendering your own lard is what really makes these anise-flavored Mexican sugar cookies stand out, but you can use vegetable shortening in a pinch. Martha made this recipe on "Martha Bakes" episode 711.

These petite fall treats will charm all but the grumpiest ghouls. Simple sugar cookies are garnished with candy corn pieces for a sweet fall treat.

It takes just four ingredients to make these easy, crispy cookies.