Grandma June’s Sugar Cookie Recipe

5 dozen
30 min

When I was a little girl, I thought that EVERYONE’S grandma made the BEST cookies. But as I got older, I realized that was not in fact true. NOT ALL COOKIES ARE CREATED EQUAL. When I want a soft delicious frosted sugar cookie…only my Grandma June’s sugar cookie recipe will do. She used to make us GIANT heart shaped sugar cookies for Valentine’s Day, and NO OTHER Valentine cookie will ever taste as sweet. Grandma’s sugar cookies are perfect for cutting and frosting, stay soft for days, and don’t take a bunch of extra steps or fancy ingredients. It was so fun to drag out my old stained up copy of Grandma June’s sugar cookie recipe and share the fun of baking with my own kiddos this week. Soooo many memories on one little 3X5 card.

Funny story. When I was in high school, my best friend and I decided to make cookies for all of our friends for Christmas. Sooooo with grandma’s recipe, a box of cookie cutters, and a dream, we set our plan in motion one day while babysitting…because of course the best time for two teens to bake Christmas cookies is when they are unsupervised, in someone else’s house, AND in charge of small children. We decided that we needed A LOT of cookies, so of course we tripled the recipe (warning…do not triple this recipe because it already makes a TON of cookies). We had NO IDEA what we were actually doing, but we knew we wanted to REALLY impress our friends with some beautiful cookies. Everything started off pretty fun for about an hour or so. We cut out reindeer and snowmen and tried to make the perfect cookies. Then as the hours rolled by and we were STILLLLLL cutting out cookies, things got a bit sloppier. Legless Santas were no longer rejected, angels without wings passed the bar, and eventually circles even became an acceptable Christmas cookie shape. Standards REALLY started slipping. Then as it started to get later and it was time to frost the cookies (that covered EVERY SQUARE INCH of the borrowed kitchen), we really didn’t have much left to give. I remember trying to make pretty frosting colors, but ending up with brown, light brown, gray, and grayish/orange. We didn’t even CARE anymore. We frosted, and sprinkled, and frosted and sprinkled. We had gray snowmen, brown stars, and orange Christmas trees. AND THEN….we stumbled upon another problem. HOW WERE WE GOING TO GET HUNDREDS OF COOKIES TO SCHOOL??? The next day we rolled up to school with cardboard boxes LOADED with the ugliest Christmas cookies you have ever seen. We LITERALLY toted boxes filled with cookies around all day (because of course they wouldn’t fit into our locker) and passed out ugly broken poop colored Christmas cookies to anyone and EVERYONE we saw. I remember kids I barely knew coming up to me in the hallway…”HEY…ARE YOU THE COOKIE GIRL?? I HEAR YOU GOT A BOX OF COOKIES??” So I was basically a cookie dealer for a day…NBD. Nothing like one of Grandma June’s cookies to really bring people together for the holidays…haha.

You can find my favorite Almond Joy cookie recipe . Happy Baking!!! –Jessica



Grandma June’s Sugar Cookie Recipe
Recipe details
  • 5  dozen
  • Prep time: 20 Minutes Cook time: 10 Minutes Total time: 30 min
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Ingredients

  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups lard/butter (softened)/or shortening My grandma used lard, but I just use salted butter
  • 4 tsp. cream of tartar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • 7 cups flour
Instructions

Mix together softened butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and milk. After creamy, add in cream of tartar, salt, baking soda. Add flour 1-2 cups at a time and slowly mix together.
Flour surface heavily. Lay out 1/6th or so of the dough on floured surface. Sprinkle liberally with flour and roll out dough. You may need to continue to sprinkle flour as you roll out dough to keep it from sticking. I also like to coat the rolling pin with flour.
Cut out cookies with cookie cutters.
Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Cook until the edges JUST begin to brown.
Let cool completely before frosting.
Jessica Perkins
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Comments
  • Carole Carole on Jul 08, 2021

    Cookies now for the summer...wow, this is such a good idea. I laugh because I eat cranberry sauce with my dinners all the time and it's not Thanksgiving. In fact, sometimes I do that with my sandwich at lunch time. It's fun, just enjoy it whenever.


    Thank you for the recipes and the lovely family stories.


    Carole

    Pinellas Park, FL

  • Colleen Colleen on Sep 01, 2021

    The story about taking the ugly Christmas cookies to school was hilarious thanks for making my day!


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