The Best Soft Sour Cream Sugar Cookies

Have you started your holiday baking yet, friends?? Baking Christmas cookies is one of my favorite things to do at this time of year—I always make way too many! 😂 Today I thought I’d share my favorite Christmas cookie recipe with you—Sour Cream Cut Outs (or Sour Cream Sugar Cookies). I know it sounds weird—sour cream in cookies? But I promise these are soft and delicious and perfect! We made these every year when I was growing up, and from the smell of them baking to that perfect first bite these cookies ARE Christmas to me!

But, of course, you could make these any time of year. I’ve been known to make them for Valentine’s Day, for my sister’s bachelorette party, and, now that I have these Mickey and Minnie cookie cutters, for any random Tuesday! Trust me, you will absolutely love these cookies!

Make the Cookie Dough

Start with 1 stick of softened butter and 1 cup of sugar in a large bowl. Beat that with an electric mixer until fluffy. Then add 2 eggs and 1 tsp of vanilla. Beat that until it’s smooth. Then add 1/2 cup sour cream and mix again until fully combined.

In a separate bowl, mix up your dry ingredients—3 2/3 cups of flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, and 1/2 tsp salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients a little at a time, mixing with the electric mixer after each addition. The dough will get really thick and difficult to mix, so you might have to switch from the electric mixer to a long-handled wooden spoon. You can also use your hands! Fair warning, though, this dough is SUPER sticky and will stick like crazy to your hands. But if you don’t mind that, go for it!

Once the dough is mixed up, pop a lid on your bowl and refrigerate it for at least 2 hours.

Cut Out the Cookies

When you’re ready to bake the cookies, preheat your oven to 425°F.

Now it’s time to get out the rolling pin and your cookie cutters! I got my Mickey and Minnie Cookie Cutters from Amazon, but you can use any cookie cutters you want!

Roll out portions of the chilled dough to about 1/4 inch thick on a floured surface. Lots of flour is important here—flour your counter, your hands, and your rolling pin! This dough is really sticky, so you have to flour everything to keep the cookies from sticking to the counter and getting all misshapen when you try to pick them up. Cut out as many cookies as you can from that portion of dough and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet. Then take up the excess and a portion of fresh dough and knead them together and roll out again. Repeat the process until you’re out of dough!

Bake each batch at 425°F for 4–6 minutes (5 minutes is usually perfect for me, but it really depends on your oven!). You’ll know they’re done when they’re slightly puffed up but not too brown on the bottom or edges. If they’re getting too brown around the edges, try rolling them slightly thicker.

Once they come out of the oven, transfer them to wire cooling racks (or wax paper layered over paper towels on your dining room table if you’re like me and don’t own wire cooling racks 😅 #notafoodblogger) and cool completely.

Whip Up Some Icing

We use regular butter cream icing on these cookies, and it’s so delicious! Combine 1 stick softened butter, 1 lb (or approx 3 3/4 cups) powdered sugar, 1 1/2 tsp vanilla, and about 4 tbsp milk in a bowl. I didn’t have milk, so I used half and half. Just use whatever you have on hand—you just need to make it spreadable! Mix it up with a whisk or a wooden spoon (or you can use an electric mixer!).

We always do red and green icing for Christmas, so separate the icing into two smaller bowls to add the food coloring. I add about 5 drops of each color and mix REALLY well! (The red turns out more pink, but we don’t mind.)

Be generous with that icing (I mean, it’s the best part!) and add sprinkles if you like! Nonpareils are my favorite kind of sprinkles to use for these cookies, but the holiday colors can be really hard to find. Whenever I see them, I try to stock up! I did find holiday colors on Amazon here and regular color ones here.

And we have a rule in our house that if you break a cookie while icing it, then you get to eat it! 😁 (You should see how many Liam breaks on purpose while he helps me each year lol.) I store these in an air tight container for up to two weeks sometimes (if they even last that long)! These Mickey and Minnie cookie cutters were larger than the Christmas ones we usually use, so we were just shy of 3 dozen with this batch. If you use smaller cookie cutters, you can probably get around 4 dozen.

These make the perfect snack for Christmas movie night! And don’t forget to save a few to leave for Santa! ☺️

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