Name: Brown Sugar Butter Cookies {Soft & Chewy}
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 25 min
Ingredients: 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour ((10 ounces)); 3/4 cup light brown sugar ((5 ounces)); 1 large egg; 1 cup unsalted butter ((room temperature)); 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract; 1/2 teaspoon baking powder; 1/2 teaspoon salt; 1/2 cup white granulated sugar for rolling ((optional))

Buttery cookies made with brown sugar. These chewy Brown Sugar Butter Cookies are an easy dessert to make! If you love sugar cookies, see all of our recipes here.

I’m a little bit of a cookie addict. Butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies duke it out for tops in my book. I know, I know, kinda boring. That’s why I love simple tricks that transform those classics into something new.

I have been making these for so long I could practically do it with my eyes closed 🙂 We took a traditional vanilla butter cookie and swapped the white sugar for brown sugar. Brown sugar keeps the cookies soft and tender. It also gives the cookie a richer flavor.

What is brown sugar?

Brown sugar is simply white sugar with molasses. Natural brown sugar means that there is molasses left naturally after the refining process. Commercially produced brown sugar has molasses added in. Dark brown sugar has a little more molasses than light brown sugar.

Can you use brown sugar in place of white? Yes, in some cases, but brown sugar has more moisture in it than white, so it can cause baked goods to be extra soft and tender, but also dense. For that reason it won’t work in recipes that are meant to be light and airy.

What does brown sugar taste like? Brown sugar has a deeper, richer flavor than white sugar. Think of caramel or toffee…that’s the flavor you’ll be adding to baked goods with brown sugar.

Tips for Making This Brown Sugar Cookie Recipe:

Here are 6 key tips you can do to make sure this brown sugar butter cookies recipe is successful:

Use light brown sugar. Although we’ve tested this with dark brown sugar, we find it works best with light brown. The cookies are soft, tender and dense. Like shortbread!
Use a mixer. This makes sure the ingredients get combined really well.
Cream the butter and sugar really well. You don’t want any pockets of butter because they’ll melt during cooking and cause your cookies to spread unevenly. Cream the butter, then cream the butter and sugars again. And even again for good measure.
Scrape the sides of the bowl. Hard pieces of butter can stick to the sides of the bowl. Scraping the sides of the bowl several times during mixing prevents this from happening.
Roll into balls, press, then refrigerate. Refrigerating the dough prevents unwanted cookie spread. All it needs is at least 30 minutes. Remember to make fork tine marks in the cookie while the dough is soft. When it comes out of the fridge the dough will be hard.
Don’t overbake! We do not let the cookies get brown so that they stay soft. They will look set, but should be still really soft.

What shape is best for butter cookies?

I usually debate about what shape to bake these into. I like to avoid rolling and cutting cookies as much as I can, but for these cookies, rolling worked better than dropping.

I tried the criss-cross of fork tines, but that looked so much like traditional peanut butter cookies I had to change it. You don’t want to confuse people! I went with a single press of the fork, but these could also be pressed down with the bottom of a cup, or even your fingers.

Helpful Resources:

Our best Cookie Making Tools that every baker should have.
Tips on how to freeze cookies.
Do your cookies turn out flat? Find out why here.