Last week, I quickly darted into the grocery store to grab the ingredients for my strawberry cheesecake rice krispie treats. After dropping a jumbo-sized box of cereal into my basket, I strode over to the baking aisle to pick up the pudding mix. While I hurriedly scanned the overcrowded shelves, an elderly woman accompanied by a store employee approached the adjacent display.
As I reached for my flavor and turned to leave, I overheard the customer remark, “You should see the recipe!”
When I arrived at the produce section to cross “Brussels sprouts” off my list (we roast these every day!), I nearly slammed my palm against my forehead. I completely forgot to toss marshmallows into my basket while on the baking aisle! I doubled back, and after nestling the package between my other boxes, I noticed the tiny old lady a few yards away, still studying a pouch of cookie mix.
I slowly approached her, politely inquiring, “What are you baking?”
“Oh!” she responded. “I want to make sugar cookies with my shamrock cookie cutter for St. Patrick’s Day. But you should see the recipe I have… It’s so long! So I thought I’d take a shortcut and buy a mix.” She peered at me. “Do you know anything about baking?”
I suppressed a smile and replied, “Well, I love baking cookies! Let’s take a look at the package you have.”
We slowly read through the instructions at the bottom for roll-out cookies, skipping the drop-cookie variety at the top, before shuffling down the aisle to browse through the different food coloring options. Her eyes looked slightly overwhelmed, so I handed her my food blogger business card and offered, “Why don’t you email me if you have any questions? Do you have a computer?”
She accepted my card and responded, “Yes, I live with my daughter and she has one.” She glanced at the text, then back at me. “Amy, you’re an angel!” she exclaimed while wrapping me in a frail hug.
She then shared, “I’m 93 years old and have bad arthritis in my index finger, but I really want to bake these cookies. My husband’s birthday was on St. Patrick’s Day, so I’m throwing a party at the Senior Citizen’s Center and baking cookies for that.”
After pausing, she continued, “I go early—around 9 am—to set up decorations. And I never have my party on the actual holiday because they usually schedule a luncheon or something else that day. You should come!”
I walked home positively glowing, a smile permanently etched on my heart. When I turn 93 years old, I still want to be baking cookies too!
But as I started up the driveway, another thought crossed my mind. Those cookie mixes aren’t very good for you… I should develop my own recipe for healthy roll-out sugar cookies!
Dozens of cookies later, I finally perfected my recipe. These little beauties are as easy as a premade mix—no electric mixer needed!—and taste just as buttery as your grandma’s traditional treats. With their rich flavor and soft texture, no one will ever guess they’re actually skinny and really low fat!
These low-calorie cookies begin with the dry ingredients. Compared to regular drop sugar cookies, the roll-out variety generally require a bit more flour and a lot less baking powder. Too much baking powder creates a funny-looking bump in the center of your shapes, making them awkward to decorate. With a mere ¼ of a teaspoon, you’ll end up with perfectly smooth tops and just a hint of airiness inside.
I also added cornstarch. As my secret weapon in many of my recipes, it creates irresistibly soft cookies. I prefer my sugar cookies firm with a little chew—not crunchy!—so I mixed in just ¾ of a teaspoon, which resulted in the perfect delicate texture.
Classic sugar cookies typically contain 1 or 2 sticks of butter. That’s ½ to 1 full cup! I reduced the amount to a mere 2 tablespoons of butter, and I melted it to subtly increase the cookies’ chewiness (see here for details), as well as to eliminate the need for an electric mixer. The fewer dishes to wash, the better!
Note: Make sure your melted butter cools and your egg warms to room temperature before mixing them together. If you add a cold egg to hot butter, it rapidly chills the butter and creates tiny spheres of solidified fat.
My low fat recipe requires both vanilla extract and butter extract. The butter extract gives these treats the rich buttery flavor of traditional indulgent cookies without their excess fat and calories. I highly recommend buying a bottle! It’s shelf-stable and will keep for ages. With a fairly inexpensive price tag, you can find it at almost any grocery store, as well as Walmart and Target.
I bounced back and forth between what sugars to use. I originally mixed in half granulated and half brown because brown sugar provides a slight caramel undertone to cookies in addition to a little extra chew. When I ran out of granulated on my second batch and substituted raw cane sugar instead, the cookies turned out freckly! The brown and raw cane sugars failed to completely dissolve, so in the final recipe, I omitted both and stuck with granulated sugar.
Once you mix up the cookie dough, place it in the fridge for 1 hour. Chilling is mandatory! The cookie dough is too sticky to roll out after you first stir it together. However, don’t leave it for more than 1.5 hours; it’ll be too stiff and will crack under the rolling pin.
Now we’re ready to roll out the dough! Most of you are probably expert cookie makers already, but as a quick refresher, here are my 4 Helpful Tips for Fail-Proof Cutout Sugar Cookies:
♥ Use LOTS of flour. Cover your working surface with it, rub it into the rolling pin, and sprinkle it on both sides of the cookie dough. It’s easy to brush off any lingering flour from your cookie dough cutouts before placing them on the baking sheet, and you’ll avoid the frustration of peeling up cookie dough in stretched out, mangled shapes.
♥ Flour the cookie cutter. Dip it in flour, shake off the excess, and press down. Repeat. You don’t want dough sticking to the cookie cutter either!
♥ Make cuts as close to each other as possible. This minimizes the amount of leftover cookie dough you need to reroll. Rerolled cookie dough contains more flour, which reduces its soft texture and increases the chances of crunchy cookies.
♥ Peel leftover cookie dough away from the cutouts. NOT the other way around. Again, this reduces the likelihood of stretched out, mangled shapes.
In my oven, the first round of rolled out cookies required a little bit more time. I baked them for 11-13 minutes to achieve that gorgeous pale, perfectly done color. The rerolled cookies finished in barely 9-10 minutes, due to their extra flour. These bake times resulted in the firm, barely soft cookies that I absolutely adore. However, this may vary depending on your oven and the thickness of your cookies, so keep a watchful eye on your pans to prevent burned crunchy ones!
You only need 4 ingredients for this easy pastel pink icing: powdered (confectioners’) sugar, vanilla, milk, and a teensy tiny itty bitty drop of red food coloring. Basically the smallest amount you can possibly squeeze out of the bottle. Stir everything together, spoon it into a zip-topped bag, and cut off the corner before piping it onto the cookies. Draw whatever designs your heart desires; the sky’s the limit!
Guys, you are going to fall head over heels for these adorable Skinny Heart-Shaped Sugar Cookies. Warm buttery flavors fill every bite, completely deceiving all of my taste testers into believing they were the traditional fat-laden treats. With their incredibly easy instructions and perfectly soft texture, you’ll never need another sugar cookie recipe again!
As soon as I finished their photo shoot, I offered one to my guy, mentioning that I left the unused icing on the counter along with 3 undecorated cookies. He nibbled on that first one while I walked out of the kitchen, and when I returned, I found an entirely empty bag of icing. And not a single cookie in sight.
Yes, he polished off 4 of these skinny sugar cookies… And he doesn’t even like cookies!
I absolutely positively promise you—they’re that good.
| Skinny Heart-Shaped Sugar Cookies | | Print |
- for the cookies
- 1 ¼ cups (150g) all-purpose flour (measured like this), plus more for rolling
- ¾ tsp cornstarch
- ¼ tsp baking powder
- ⅛ tsp salt
- 2 tbsp (28g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp butter extract
- ½ cup + 2 tbsp (120g) granulated sugar
- for the icing
- 5 tbsp (40g) powdered (confectioners’) sugar, sifted
- ¼ tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp skim milk
- 1 tiny drop red food coloring
- To prepare the cookies, whisk together the 1 ¼ cups of flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the butter, egg, vanilla extract, and butter extract. Stir in the sugar. Add in the flour mixture, stirring just until incorporated. Shape the dough into a 1”-thick rectangle. Tightly cover with plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F, and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- On a well-floured surface, roll out the chilled dough until ⅛” thick. Lightly flour a 3” tall heart-shaped cookie cutter and press into the dough, making sure each heart lays as close to its neighbors as possible to minimize unused dough. Peel the unused dough away from the hearts, and place the hearts onto the prepared baking sheets. Reroll the unused dough, and repeat.
- Bake the heart-shaped dough at 350°F for 10-13 minutes. (The rerolled dough generally requires a little less time.) Cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
- To prepare the icing, stir together the powdered sugar, vanilla, milk, and food coloring in a small bowl. Spoon into a zip-topped bag, and snip off the corner. Pipe onto the cooled cookies.
The first round of cookies may bake slower (closer to 11-13 minutes), whereas the rerolled cookie dough seems to bake faster (9-10 minutes). Keep a close eye on your cookies because ovens do vary!
For a clean-eating version of these cookies, see this recipe of mine!
{low fat, low calorie}
Hello Amy! I tried making this but somehow the dough came out strange. I did decrease the sugar amount to 90 grams but I did everything else exactly just like the way your recipe is. I realized there’s something wrong with the dough when I add the flour to the wet ingredients…. It somehow become a bit stretchy like a bread dough and the dough itself is a bit wet than usual cookie dough. When I bake it, it came out a bit like bread but not rising (which make it strangely chewy). I wonder if I did something wrong?
I’m honored that you tried my recipe, Zahra! Unfortunately, decreasing the sugar is exactly what caused the issues that you experienced. In many recipes, including this one, sugar actually contributes to the total “liquid” volume because it dissolves in liquids (unlike flour, which stays intact when mixed with liquids). So by using less than ½ cup of sugar, you changed the ratio of wet to dry ingredients by quite a bit, which really affects the texture of both the cookie dough and the fully baked cookies. If you use the full amount of sugar, the texture should turn out soft and chewy, just like these sugar cookies are intended to be! 🙂
I see! Thank you for replying. I also want to make sure about the flour…. Is is a medium protein flour or low one?
It’s my pleasure, Zahra! You just need regular all-purpose flour, not cake flour (low protein) or bread flour (high protein). Does that make sense? 🙂
Yes! It does make sense! I will try making it again and then see how it will turn out 💕💕 once again, thank you!
It’s my pleasure, Zahra! I’m always happy to help! 🙂 I’m really excited to hear how your next batch turns out!
Can I not roll out the dough and make shapes? I only want drop style sugar cookies?
I’m honored that you’d like to try this recipe of mine too, Sue! You can make drop-style sugar cookies if you’d like. I’d recommend reducing the flour by 2 tablespoons {15g} (otherwise, your cookies won’t spread at all since this recipe was specifically designed for cut-out sugar cookies that hold their shape!). At the end of Step 1, you can leave the cookie dough in the bowl and just chill it for 30 minutes. Use a spoon and spatula to transfer it to your baking sheets in Step 3, and flatten it slightly with the spatula. Your drop-style cookies should finish baking in about the same amount of time. They’ll be done when the centers still feel a bit underdone, but if you leave them on the warm baking sheet for 10 minutes after removing them from the oven, that’ll allow the centers to bake all the way through while giving your cookies the best soft and chewy texture.
I can’t wait to hear what you think of these sugar cookies! 🙂
Just tried baking them drop-style this morning! I ended up cutting out the butter extract, they were delicious, thank you! The sweetness and texture were perfect, I’ll definitely make more this week 🙂
I’m so glad you enjoyed these cookies, Juniper! It means so much that you’d take the time to let me know, as well as rate this recipe so highly. That’s the best kind of compliment there is too, if you already think you’ll make more this week! 🙂 Thank you for your sweet comment — you just put the biggest smile on my face!
This is exactly what I’ve been searching for, and I can’t wait to make them!!! I was wondering if the sticks of Blue Bonnet Margarine could be used instead of regular butter? Or would it mess up the consistency? Thanks so much! I love your recipes!!!
You’re such a sweetheart, Gabi! It means so much that you love my recipes. Thank you for taking the time to let me know — you made my day! ♡
If possible, I don’t recommend using sticks of Blue Bonnet margarine, whether their original or light variety. They contain more water, and that water will make your cookies more cakey or bready, rather than soft and chewy. For the best texture results, I recommend using regular butter (or margarine that has 100 calories per tablespoon, which means it has about the same amount of water and fat as regular butter, and should therefore yield the same texture!).
However, if you’re really concerned about lowering the number of calories per cookie by using Blue Bonnet margarine (because it’s 40-60 calories per tablespoon, versus butter with 100) and don’t mind a more bready or cakey texture, then I think the flavor should be similar enough with that substitution.
Does all of this make sense?
I’d love to hear what you think of these sugar cookies if you end up making them! 🙂
These were amazing! You would never guess they are skinny. I doubled the recipe and everything came our perfectly! I’m a believer in butter extract now. Thanks Amy!!
Hi Amy! Thank you for this recipe, so so much! Being quite sensitive to butter and sugar, most store-bought cookies (especially with icing) make me feel ill, but your recipe has made those cookie dreams far more accessible 😄 I’ve baked slightly adapted versions of your recipe thrice now (4th soon!) and was hoping for some advice?
Instead of using cookie cutters, I’ve mostly done your original recipe (albeit with extra flour) to try and sculpt it into some little critters. Since I’m actively working with the dough, it doesn’t stay cool or retain its shape without adding nearly 3 Tbsp of extra flour, which I know is far from ideal. I’ve also tried my best to keep the sculpted cookies equally thin and uniform in size, but I’m sure some got to a quarter-inch despite my best efforts (most times the cookie wasn’t level) while size was far harder to control (anywhere from just over 1 inch to 2.5 inches). I tried to decrease the baking time to 8 minutes at 180C to compensate for the extra dry ingredients, but I have no idea how to tell if it’s cooked and end up taking them out of the oven once the edges start browning.
All these factors ended up changing the texture of the cookies, making them dry and kind of cake-like inside with a slightly crispy edge. It’s nice in its own way, but I’m wondering if I can get back some of the intended texture without losing the sculpting part? Thank you so much!
I’m honored that you’ve made my recipe that many times already, Juniper! That’s such a huge compliment. Thank you for taking the time to let me know — it truly means a lot! 🙂
I haven’t tried sculpting cookie dough before, so I’m not personally sure of the best approach. I wish I could be more help, but I don’t want to lead you astray!
However, a few things come to mind…
First, if you’re baking the cookies until the edges start browning, that would factor into why they’re dry inside with a crispy edge. If you bake them for a shorter period of time, that should help with the texture! (When these cookies are overbaked, they do tend to end up on the cakey side, rather than chewy.) My initial guess would be to bake them for 6 minutes or so instead. You can also try lowering the oven temperature to 300°F (150°C).
When they’re made as written (rolled out and cut into shapes with cookie cutters!), the cookies are done baking when the centers still feel a little soft and underdone but the edges feel pretty firm and done. The heat from the hot baking sheet continues to cook the centers all the way through while you let them rest for those first 5 minutes after removing the tray from the oven. If you wait to remove them from the oven until the centers are completely firm, the heat from the hot baking sheet can overbake them, which then results in that extra firm, cakey, or dry cookie texture.
Second, instead of adding more flour, you could try reducing the amount of sugar. In this recipe, sugar actually contributes to the liquid volume (because it dissolves in liquids, whereas something like flour doesn’t and just forms a paste instead!). By decreasing the sugar, it should make the cookie dough stiffer and (hopefully!) easier to sculpt.
Finally (and you may be doing this already!), if you divide the dough into multiple parts, rather than shaping it into a single rectangle to chill, you could work with smaller amounts of dough and keep the rest chilled while you worked. You could also put the sculpted dough back in the refrigerator to help prevent it from losing its shape while you work with the rest.
Again, these are just my best guesses because I haven’t sculpted cookie dough before. 😉 I’d love to hear how your next round of cookies turns out!
These are amazing! I’ve tried many cookies in the past that don’t have much better in them and they’re usually just ok but these are so delicious. They were just as good as a high fat cookie. I loved the mixture of chewiness and crispiness. Thanks for sharing this recipe, it’s definitely a winner and I will be making them again 🙂
What a sweet review, Jo! I’m so happy that you enjoyed these cookies and we are honored that you would keep this recipe to make them again in the future, too! Thank you so much for taking the time to share! 🙂