Old Fashioned Sour Cream Cookies just melt in your mouth with their soft, cakey texture and deliciously simple frosting. This no-chill cookie recipe is so quick, you’ll be enjoying these homemade sour cream sugar cookies in no time at all!
Adding sour cream to cookie dough is not a new idea. In fact, you’ll find sour cream in lots of classic and modern cookie recipes. It’s added primarily as a way to add moisture to baked goods, to keep them soft and tender, and to add that signature tangy flavor.
I have other cookie recipes with sour cream in them for texture (Hocus Pocus Cookies, Circus Animal Cookies), but in this recipe, the sour cream is the delicious main flavor ingredient too!
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Sour Cream Cookies Recipe Highlights
- Soft, Cake-like Texture – My sour cream cookies are super soft, with a texture very similar to mini cakes.
- Delicious Frosting – A very simple frosting made with butter and powdered sugar is the perfect finishing touch. Tint it any color that you like, or decorate the cookies for your special occasion.
- Easy Cookie Recipe – There’s no need to chill this cookie dough, so making sour cream cookies is as easy as mixing and baking! Follow along for all of the recipe details and my best cookie baking tips.
Key Ingredients
Complete list of ingredients with quantities and instructions is located in the recipe card below
- Flour: Use regular all-purpose flour for this recipe, and be sure that you’re measuring it correctly. You should spoon the flour into our measuring cup and then level it off, rather than dipping down into the flour container with your scoop.
- Butter: Fresh, room temperature, unsalted butter will give you the best flavor.
- Eggs: While you’re softening the butter, let the eggs come to room temperature as well. This allows the proteins to loosen up, creating a smoother cookie dough.
- Sour Cream: While we sometimes say that you can replace sour cream with yogurt in cookie recipes, you don’t want to do that in this recipe. Use full-fat regular sour cream too. Low-fat sour cream will give you less than stellar results.
- Vanilla Extract: Use a good quality vanilla extract to enhance the simple flavors of the sour cream, sugar, and flour.
How To Make Sour Cream Cookies
Get ready to bake by preheating your oven to 350°F (180°C) or 140°C for a fan oven. Line sheet trays with parchment paper and set aside while you make the dough.
Top Tips
- Use room temperature ingredients: It’s key that you let the butter soften to room temperature, but did you know that you should also take the chill off of the eggs and sour cream? Set them on the counter for about an hour before you mix up the dough.
- Try other flavors: Add a bit of almond extract or lemon zest to the dough to give these cookies a slightly different flavor. Use this recipe as your starting point!
- For smoother cookies: Use slightly wet fingers to smooth out the dough balls before baking.
- Go easy on the food coloring: You only need a tiny drop of gel food coloring to make pastel pink icing.
- Let them cool: the cookies need to be completely cool before frosting them. Otherwise the icing will melt right off!
- Be careful stacking these: The icing will dry a bit, but it won’t completely harden like royal icing does. It’s best to store sour cream cookies in a single layer.
- Add sprinkles! Make these cookies even more festive by decorating them with rainbow sprinkles or specialty sprinkles that fit the theme for the day.
How to Store Sour Cream Cookies
- Frosted sour cream cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
- They can also be frozen for up to 3 months! Freeze the cookies without frosting, or freeze the frosted cookies on a sheet tray first before transferring them to freezer bags.
Other Desserts You Should Try
If you enjoy these sour cream sugar cookies, you’ll definitely love trying more of my soft cookie recipes!
- Soft Snickerdoodles
- Soft and Chewy Sugar Cookies
- Lemon Crinkle Cookies
- Texas Sheet Cake Cookies
- Copycat Lofthouse Cookies
- Carrot Cake Cookies
Recipe FAQs
Are these good without the frosting?
You can skip the frosting if you like, but I really think that it adds a lot here. With the frosting, these soft cookies are like tiny frosted cakes!
What does sour cream do for baking recipes?
Sour cream as an ingredient in baking recipes is a way to add moisture to a batter or dough without thinning it down like a liquid would. This extra moisture gives baked goods like cookies and cakes a tender, light, airy texture with a fine crumb.
Is this recipe the same as Italian Sour Cream Cookies?
There is a classic version of Italian Cookies made with sour cream that is very similar to this recipe! The main difference is that my sour cream cookies are topped with buttercream frosting, while the Italian cookies would generally be covered in a thin hard glaze.
Enjoy this easy old-fashioned recipe for soft Sour Cream Cookies today! If you’re planning to make them later, be sure to Pin the recipe so you can easily find it again.
Sour Cream Cookies
Equipment
Ingredients
For the cookies:
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs at room temperature
- ½ cup sour cream at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the Frosting:
- ½ cup unsalted butter
- 2 ½ cups powdered sugar
- 2-3 tablespoons milk
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon salt
- Food coloring optional
Instructions
For the cookies:
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C) or 140°C for a fan oven. Line sheet trays with parchment paper and set aside.
- In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
- In a separate large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, sour cream, and vanilla extract and beat again, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
- Add the flour mixture in 2-3 smaller additions; mixing well after each addition.
- Scoop the dough using a small cookie scoop (1.5 tablespoons) onto the prepared baking sheets 3” apart. Use damp fingers to smooth the tops and press down slightly.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 7-9 minutes or until lighty golden and they spring back when gently touched.
- Allow to cool completely before frosting.
For the frosting:
- Beat the butter and powdered sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in the milk a little at a time until desired consistency is achieved.
- Stir in the vanilla and salt. Add the food coloring if desired and mix well.
- Frost each cooled cookie with a generous amount of frosting.
Notes
- Use room temperature ingredients: It’s key that you let the butter soften to room temperature, but did you know that you should also take the chill off of the eggs and sour cream? Set them on the counter for about an hour before you mix up the dough.
- Try other flavors: Add a bit of almond extract or lemon zest to the dough to give these cookies a slightly different flavor. Use this recipe as your starting point!
- For smoother cookies: Use slightly wet fingers to smooth out the dough balls before baking.
- Go easy on the food coloring: You only need a tiny drop of gel food coloring to make pastel pink icing.
- Let them cool: the cookies need to be completely cool before frosting them. Otherwise the icing will melt right off!
- Be careful stacking these: The icing will dry a bit, but it won’t completely harden like royal icing does. It’s best to store sour cream cookies in a single layer.
- Add sprinkles! Make these cookies even more festive by decorating them with rainbow sprinkles or specialty sprinkles that fit the theme for the day.
Nutrition
This website provides approximate nutrition information for convenience and as a courtesy only. Nutrition data is gathered primarily from the USDA Food Composition Database, whenever available, or otherwise other online calculators.
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