3-Ingredient Butter Cookies - My Gorgeous Recipes (2024)

3-Ingredient Butter Cookies, a super simple and quick recipe that will go down a treat with the whole family. The cookies require minimal effort and only 3 ingredients that everyone has around, they are rich and buttery and simply melt in your mouth. The are perfect not only during the festive season, but also all year round.

This is one of those easy cookie recipes that everyone should have around when the sweet tooth strikes again. They are the simplest cookies you could whip up, and are made only with cupboard (and fridge) essentials.

No need to worry about a certain type of flour, baking agents, lots of fancy and expensive ingredients, this really is simplicity at its best!

And while December is the month when everyone's kitchen is filled with the sweet aroma of baked goods, this recipe works well throughout the year not only at Christmas, since there are no seasonal ingredients to worry about.

These butter cookies are very similar texture wise to my Scottish Shortbread, which are as buttery and crumbly, but the difference is they also use cornflour and are rolled and cut with a cookie cutter.

For the sake of simplicity, the 3-ingredient butter cookies only require the use of a fork to slightly flatten them out and give them a rustic touch, but both cookie recipes are a winner, that's for sure.

Of course, they can be turned into some great Christmas butter cookies or Danish butter cookies but decorating them with sprinkles and icing, but that's entirely optional.

Ingredients used

• icing sugar - or confectioners' / powdered sugar
• butter - I like using salted butter for this recipe, but unsalted also works well
• flour - plain regular flour

Step-by-step photos and instructions

• melt the butter and allow it to cool slightly
• add the sifted powdered sugar and mix to combine
• sift in the flour, and knead everything into a dough
• wrap the dough in kitchen foil and refrigerate for 10 minutes

• preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit)
• use your hands to shape out dough balls the size of a walnut
• transfer the balls onto a baking tray and use a fork to slightly flatten the dough balls out
• bake for 15-17 minutes or until the cookies are slightly golden
• remove them from the oven, and allow them to cool for 5 minutes onto the baking tray, before transferring them onto a cooling rack to cool down completely
• sprinkle them with extra icing sugar

Expert tips

The best thing about these cookies is that they do not spread at all in the oven, which means you don't need to worry much about spacing them too far apart on the baking tray.

If they do spread it must be because too much butter has been used - it is crucial to weight the ingredients for this cookie recipe, otherwise you will not get the same results.

I also tried using soften butter instead of melted butter, and I creamed that together with the icing sugar before adding the flour to the mixture. Both methods work very well!

If you want to turn them into Christmas butter cookies, you can roll the dough and use festive cookie cutters, then decorate them once they are out of the oven and cooled down completely. Or you can dip them into melted chocolate like with my Viennese Finger Cookies.

Recipe FAQs

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