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.

To fix this, you can add more fat to the dough. This can be in the form of butter, shortening, or even olive oil. Just add a little at a time until the dough comes together and is no longer crumbly. You may also need to add more liquid, such as milk or water, to get the right consistency.

Using too much baking soda or baking powder can really mess up a recipe, causing it to rise uncontrollably and taste terrible. But don't freak out if you accidentally poured too much baking soda in cookie dough or added too much baking powder to cake batter. Depending on the situation, you might be able to fix it.

You'll get cookies that are harder, drier, crumblier, and spread far less.

An excessive amount of butter makes it where the flour is unable to absorb the combined fat, which causes the cookie to spread too widely and the sugar to carbonize more easily because it's surrounded by too buttery a dough.

You may notice visible pockets of flour, streaks of butter, or uneven coloration. When overmixed, though, cookie dough will feel dense, greasy, heavy, and warm. It may be tough to roll out or work with, just like overmixed pie dough.

Working the dough too much.

Thankfully I was eventually steered in the right direction. Over-working the dough yields a tough cookie, which is not at all what you want. The very best sugar cookies are soft and tender.

Which One Should I Use in Cookies? Basically, cookies made with butter spread more and are flatter and crisper if baked long enough. However, they are more flavorful than cookies made with shortening. Cookies made with shortening bake up taller and are more tender, but aren't as flavorful.

If the baked cookies taste a bit bland (and if the dough is fairly soft and receptive to additions), add salt and/or spices to the remaining dough before baking. If, on the other hand, they're a bit salty for your taste, try rolling the dough balls in sugar before baking.

Is baking soda or baking powder better for cookies? ›

Baking soda is typically used for chewy cookies, while baking powder is generally used for light and airy cookies. Since baking powder is comprised of a number of ingredients (baking soda, cream of tartar, cornstarch, etc.), using it instead of pure baking soda will affect the taste of your cookies.

However, if you're in a pinch, the substitution is one teaspoon baking soda equals three teaspoons baking powder. Baking soda is also much stronger than baking powder and, by trying to provide enough leavening, you may wind up with an unpleasant metallic, salty taste in the final baked product.

Recipes that use both baking soda and baking powder

The most common reason is that these recipes contain an acid, but the combination with baking soda is not enough to fully leaven the recipe, so baking powder is used to add the necessary lift.

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.

If you over sweeten, you have a few different options, according to Curtis. He suggests adding a squeeze of lemon or lime juice. "The acidity helps to balance it," he explains. If you don't have either handy, you can also try yogurt, or you can add a fat like olive oil, the chef says.

The lower the sugar, the less cookies spread, the drier/more crumbly they are. Cookies with less sugar taste less sweet, of course. But beyond that, their flavor also becomes flat; sugar is a flavor enhancer much like salt is.

Consuming excess sugar leads to a condition called insulin resistance, which is a precursor to type 2 diabetes, a fatty liver, and cardiovascular disease. Insulin is responsible for the body's absorption of glucose — or sugar — for energy. Those with insulin resistance experience a buildup of glucose in the blood.