Maple Sugar Cookies - Food duch*ess (2024)

These maple sugar cookies are buttery, tender, and out of this world delicious! This recipe takes the classic sugar cookie and gives it a good ol’ Canadian flavored twist with the addition of maple syrup and maple extract. Also, tips and tricks on how to ensure your sugar cookies keep their shape!

How to make sugar cookies that hold their shape

Isn’t it frustrating when you spend an hour making perfectly cut out delicious sugar cookies, just to find they’ve turned into blobs in the oven. Well I’ve got you covered with some tips to ensure your sugar cookies keep their shape and keep those nice perfect sharp edges!

1. No baking powder: Baking powder and baking soda not only make things rise up, they make things puff in all uninhibited directions – meaning that if you add baking powder your sugar cookies will puff up and lose their shape.

2. Chill the sugar cookies: Okay, I know we all hate doing this, but its so important for the shape! Cooling the maple sugar cookies allows the butter in the dough to solidify and cool. This means that when the sugar cookies enter the oven they are going to spread out WAY less! You can either put them in the fridge for an hour or in the freezer for 20 minutes.

3. Bake at a high oven temperature: Baking at a high oven temperature is essential to sugar cookies that hold their shape because the high temperature causes the proteins to quickly set in the cookies, locking in it’s shape, before the fats have time to melt and spread!

4. Use a spatula to transfer: A sure-fire way to ruin the shape of your sugar cookies is by using your fingers to peel it off the counter. When you’ve cut out the cookies from the rolled out dough, the best way to transfer them is by using a thin offset spatula. Basically slide the spatula under the cookie, lift it up, then use the spatula to transfer the cookie to the baking sheet. This ensures that the sugar cookie isn’t misshaped in any way.

How to make maple sugar cookies

1. Cream butter and sugar: Add the butter, sugars, maple syrup, and extracts to a bowl, then beat until it looks creamy and combined.

2. Add egg: Beat in the egg until it is well-combined with everything else and the batter looks smooth.

3. Add dry ingredients: Pour in the flour and salt, then beat again until a crumbly dough forms.

4. Chill: Using your hands, bring together the maple sugar cookie dough and shape it into a disc shape. Place the disc into the fridge to chill for 2 hours.

5. Roll out & chill: Remove the dough from the fridge and allow it to sit on the counter for 5 minutes to warm slightly. Next, roll the dough out, cut out your maple leaves, transfer them onto a baking sheet, then transfer to the freezer for 20 minutes.

6. Bake: Bake the maple sugar cookies until the edges are just beginning to turn golden. Allow the sugar cookies to cool to room temperature, then glaze with the maple glaze!

Chilling the Sugar Cookie Dough

After you’ve made the maple sugar cookie dough, you have to plop it into the fridge to chill for about 2 hours. Again, I know this part sucks – buuuuut it will really make your life easier when you’re rolling out the dough! Chilling the dough before rolling it out serves 2 purposes.

One, it allows the starch molecules to hydrate with the fat and water present from the dough. This makes the sugar cookie dough more uniform, less crumbly, and makes the dough stick together better – which in turn makes rolling it out WAY easier.

Second, cold doughs are far easier to handle than warm doughs. Plain and simple. Warm, room temperature cookie doughs are sticky, hard to handles, and fall apart easier. Warm doughs tend to stick to everything as well – to your counter, to your rolling pin, even to the cookie cutters – it’s just really a nuisance. For those reasons, a chilled dough is infinitely better. It’s easy to handle and doesn’t stick too much to everything.