Butter Cookies

Every bite of these delicately crisp and lightly sweet Butter Cookies melts in your mouth. Made with high fat, European style butter, these cookies are exceptionally rich and made small, just 2 or 3 bites of bliss!

My inspiration for these cookies came from this recipe by Melissa Clark in the New York Times. I was initially puzzled by the title, Cultured Butter Cookies, and discovered in the entertaining comment thread that I wasn’t alone. Among the hundreds of rave reviews, there were many people who were unfamiliar with what exactly ‘cultured butter’ was. One commenter quipped that they might need to take their butter to the opera or teach it French for it to qualify for the recipe.

In Melissa’s defense, the title would have been equally odd as, High Fat Butter Cookies or European Style Butter Cookies. But high fat butter is indeed the key to these delicious cookies.

What is cultured butter?

Before butter was made in factories, it was often churned from the cream of several milkings that had naturally begun to ferment, thus developing bacterial cultures. So butter from this fermented cream was termed ‘cultured butter.’ The modern method of making cultured butter is to add bacterial cultures (as is done to make yogurt) to pasteurized cream. In both cases, the result is a full flavored, high fat butter.

High fat butter is often called European style butter because the standard fat ratio (to that of water and milk solids) is at least 82% and often 85%. This is higher than the average of around 81% in the US. The term is more about the amount of fat in the butter than about where it was made. Even when cultured or high fat butter is produced in the US, it’s still typically referred to as European style.

But enough with the science lesson, let’s talk about the cookies. In flavor they remind me of the Danish butter cookies I grew up eating from a giant blue tin filled with crinkly paper muffin wrappers stacked with 2 or 3 cookies. But these Butter Cookies taste fresher, more buttery: better.

The cookie dough is simple to make, but I recommend precision with the ingredient amounts, ideally using a food scale (I never bake without one!). You’ll roll the dough into narrow logs, coat them in crunchy sugar (be sure to read recipe note #3), then slice and bake.

I have good news if you want to make this butter cookie recipe ahead of time: the dough freezes beautifully. There’s no need to thaw before baking, just add a minute or so to the baking time. I like to pre-slice the dough logs before freezing. If you freeze them without slicing first, a thin bladed or serrated edge knife works best to slice when frozen.

Pro Tip!

To keep your dough logs round, wrap them in plastic wrap and place in a cardboard tube from an empty paper towel or wrapping paper roll. Cut the tube crosswise to your desired length, then all the way through lengthwise, making it easy to insert the dough log.

More Must-Try Cookie Recipes

If you’re in a baking mood, don’t forget these other favorite cookie recipes:

• World Peace Cookies
• Italian Wedding Cookies
• Biscochitos (New Mexico’s official state cookie!)
• Gingersnap Cookies
• Soft Sugar Cookies topped with buttery sweet Sugar Cookie Icing

How to Make Butter Cookies

Step 1: Sift dry ingredients together into a medium bowl. Set aside.

Step 2: Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add egg yolk and mix until combined. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined.

Step 3: Form dough into a ball and transfer to work surface. Divide in half and roll each half into a 1 1/2-inch diameter log. Roll each log in demerara sugar. Wrap logs in plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour.

Step 4: Slice dough logs into 1/4-inch thick rounds. Arrange one-inch apart on parchment lined baking sheet and bake at 325˚F for 18 minutes. Let cool slightly then transfer to wire rack. Once cool, store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.