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Frosted Drop Sugar Cookies: a Family Favorite

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frosted drop sugar cookies

With­out even the slight­est hes­i­ta­tion, I can declare Frost­ed Drop Sug­ar Cook­ies to be our fam­i­ly’s all-time favorite Christ­mas cook­ie. If you polled them, it would­n’t just be a wide major­i­ty. I believe you would get a 100% affir­ma­tive from each of them! They are soft, chewy, melt-in-your-mouth sug­ar cook­ie perfection.

Frost­ed Drop Sug­ar Cook­ies are the first cook­ies to dis­ap­pear out of all that I make each year. They’re the ones every­body wants more of. They also hap­pen to be about the eas­i­est cook­ie I make. What’s bet­ter than that? 

Wan­na know a secret? I make these all year round, not just for Christ­mas. Yeah…they’re that kind of easy and delicious!

Enjoy, my friend! 

frosted drop sugar cookies
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Frosted Drop Sugar Cookies

★★★★★

5 from 10 reviews
  • Author: Glen­da Embree
  • Total Time: 18 min­utes
  • Yield: 36-40 cook­ies 1x
Print Recipe

Ingredients

Scale

For the Cookies:

  • 1 cup butter
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 Table­spoon vanilla
  • 3 to 3 ½ cups flour
  • 1 tsp bak­ing soda
  • 1 tsp salt

For the Frosting:

  • 1 cup butter
  • 2 Table­spoon vanilla
  • 2 Table­spoons milk
  • 2 lbs. pow­dered sugar

Instructions

  1. Cream togeth­er but­ter and sugar.
  2. Add the eggs and vanil­la and beat to combine.
  3. Add the flour, bak­ing soda and salt and mix until all ingre­di­ents are combined.
  4. Drop by cook­ie scoop onto a greased or lined bak­ing sheet.
  5. Bake at 350° for 8 min­utes.  (Cook­ies will be puffed up and super soft.  They will be bare­ly dried on top.  I promise, if you want soft, chewy cook­ies, you need to pull them out, now.  Place the cook­ie sheet on a cool­ing rack and allow the cook­ies to set for 3–5 min­utes before tak­ing them off the pan.  They will lose their puffi­ness as they settle.)
  6. To make frost­ing, beat all ingre­di­ents togeth­er with a hand mix­er or in a stand mix­er, until a thick creamy frost­ing has formed.
  7. Frost com­plete­ly cooled cook­ies. You can add sprin­kles or dec­o­ra­tions if you choose.
  8. Store in air­tight con­tain­er once frost­ing has set up.

Notes

These freeze extreme­ly well.  Put wax paper between the lay­ers if stack­ing.  If freez­ing, you can frost them, but I would avoid sprin­kle dec­o­ra­tions as those will bleed as the cook­ie thaws. 

  • Prep Time: 10 min­utes
  • Cook Time: 8 min
  • Cat­e­go­ry: Desserts, Cook­ies
  • Cui­sine: Amer­i­can

How to Make Frosted Drop Sugar Cookies

frosted drop sugar cookies

How to Make Easy Drop Sugar Cookies

There’s no big secret to these deli­cious cook­ies. It’s the basic cook­ie for­mu­la, again. Cream the but­ter and sug­ar. Beat in the eggs and vanil­la. Add the dry ingre­di­ents and mix until every­thing is ful­ly incorporated.

Drop them by the cook­ie-scoop­ful onto greased or lined cook­ie sheets. Bake 8 to 10 min­utes. The trick­i­est part of the whole recipe will be fig­ur­ing out the time for your spe­cif­ic oven. (When I’m fig­ur­ing that out, I’ll bake one cook­ie, just to get a feel for how the dough acts in my oven.) 

These cook­ies will puff up in the oven, the tops will have lost their damp­ness. When you touch it, light­ly, with your fin­ger, the top of the cook­ie will be dry, but you will be able to tell it’s still super soft in the mid­dle. That’s when you pull them out of the oven.

Set the cook­ie sheet right on your cool­ing rack for sev­er­al min­utes. The cook­ies will fin­ish “bak­ing” and set­ting up. As they cool, they will lose there puffi­ness and be flat­ter. The tops may even look a lit­tle “wrin­kled”. You’ve done every­thing per­fect­ly. That’s exact­ly how they should be. After 3 or 4 min­utes trans­fer the cook­ies to a cool­ing rack to fin­ish cooling.

Decorating Frosted Drop Sugar Cookies

When they are com­plete­ly cool, these scrump­tious cook­ies are soft and chewy. You can get as elab­o­rate or as sim­ple as you want with your dec­o­rat­ing. I have done piped dec­o­ra­tions, suc­cess­ful­ly. Typ­i­cal­ly, I do a sim­ple but­ter­cream frost­ing with easy sprin­kle dec­o­ra­tions, though. Actu­al­ly, I am known to sim­ply frost them and not dec­o­rate at all. I promise they dis­ap­pear just as quick­ly. How­ev­er you decide to dec­o­rate them, you my friend, are going to get the title of Christ­mas Cook­ie Roy­al Bak­er when you put these out for friends and fam­i­ly. Yes. Be pre­pared for Christ­mas Cook­ie infamy. It belongs to you, now!

Much love and Mer­ry Christmas! 

frosted drop sugar cookies

More Deliciously Easy Christmas Desserts

And, if you’re look­ing for even more cook­ie recipes to add to your hol­i­day reper­toire, check out my recipe for these yum­my Choco­late Crin­kle Cook­ies.

chocolate macaroons

24 thoughts on “Frosted Drop Sugar Cookies: a Family Favorite”

  3. Love these cook­ies! So much eas­i­er to make than the cook­ie-cut­ter sug­ar cook­ies, and they taste so yummy!

    ★★★★★

    Reply

    • Woot! Dana, that makes me so hap­py. I’m excit­ed that you (and they( are enjoy­ing them. Have a won­der­ful hol­i­day season!

      Reply

    • I hope you get a chance to, Swathi. They are the one cook­ie that the entire fam­i­ly is in agree­ment on each hol­i­day sea­son. Def­i­nite­ly the fam­i­ly favorite! Thanks for stop­ping by to leave a note, today!

      Reply

      • Thank you! You too! One last ques­tion. The recipe says 3–3 1/2 cups of flour. How much do you typ­i­cal­ly use and/or what deter­mines it? Plan­ning to make these this week­end! Thanks again. 

        Kristin

        Reply

        • Hi Kristin! The time of year is a big fac­tor in the amount of flour I use. If there is high humid­i­ty it usu­al­ly takes a lit­tle more and in the win­ter when the fur­nace is going and the air is dri­er it’s clos­er to the 3 or 3 1/4 cup mea­sure­ment. You want the dough to be soft, but not super sticky. It can help to bake up just one cook­ie for the first round to check the con­sis­ten­cy of the dough. That way it’s easy to make adjust­ments before you bake a whole tray. We like them to spread a lit­tle, but not get too thin. We like a thick­er, soft and chewy cook­ie, so I adjust the flour to be able to achieve that tex­ture in what­ev­er weath­er we’re experiencing.

          Reply

  8. These cook­ies are every­thing a cook­ie should be — soft, fla­vor­ful, a great vehi­cle for frost­ing but also great on their own! I will nev­er make anoth­er recipe!

    ★★★★★

    Reply

    • I use the small­est scoop from this set, slight­ly heaped. https://amzn.to/33LSyDb It makes about a 1 1/2 to 1 3/4″ ball of dough. The scoop is a #50 size. It’s an affil­i­ate link to the scoops I have. 

      Thanks for stop­ping by, today, Diane! Have a won­der­ful­ly blessed Christmas!

      Reply

  11. Thanks for the won­der­ful recipe! I made these for Christ­mas and they were deli­cious! I did have a ques­tion about the amount of pow­dered sug­ar in the frost­ing. After I had added about one pound, the frost­ing seemed to be thick enough, so I did­n’t add the remain­ing pound (I was afraid it would become too thick to spread eas­i­ly.) The frost­ing was deli­cious, I just won­dered if adding the remain­ing sug­ar would have made a dif­fer­ence in some way.

    ★★★★★

    Reply

    • Hi Ann! Thanks for stop­ping by to let me know you enjoyed the recipe. As far as the pow­dered sug­ar, I’m not sure. If all your oth­er ingre­di­ents were mea­sured exact­ly as mine that would have been much too thin a frost­ing for us. We enjoy it being able to dry and firm up in the refrig­er­a­tor and have enough body to be piped if we decide to dec­o­rate more elab­o­rate­ly. We also spread it on fair­ly thick­ly. Noth­ing runs over the edges or sides of the cook­ie. It is a thick, but soft spread. If 1 lb. worked well for you, I would go with what is best at your house. Hap­py New Year!

      Reply

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