Had to pick between butter and shortening for sugar cookies. Tried both side by side.

My niece's birthday party is this weekend and I was making sugar cookies. I always use butter but my mom swears by shortening for a softer cookie. Did a test batch of each. The butter ones spread too much and got crispy edges. The shortening ones held the shape perfect and were pillowy soft. I went with shortening for the party. Anyone else do a bake-off like this before picking a recipe?

3 comments

3 Comments

logan_ellis24d ago

Read somewhere that Kenji Lopez-Alt tested this exact thing and found shortening wins for softness every time. Butter gives better flavor but the texture trade-off is real, especially for iced cookies. Your mom was right on this one, at least from what I've seen in my kitchen.

faith_king24d ago

Wait, hold on. "Kenji Lopez-Alt tested this exact thing"? I didn't know he did a deep dive on sugar cookies. That's huge, @logan_ellis. I always figured he was more of a steak and burger guy, so this changes a lot for me. I've been team butter my whole life because my grandma used it, but now I'm questioning everything. The part about shortening holding the shape is what got me, because my last batch of butter cookies looked like deformed blobs. And they were hard by day two. I might have to apologize to my mom and admit she was right. She's going to love that.

the_linda23d ago

So am I the only one whose butter cookies somehow always turn into one giant cookie sheet blob? @faith_king, I've got a whole graveyard of flat, crispy failures to show for my loyalty to butter. At this point I'm ready to switch teams and call my mom to apologize too, just gotta work up the courage first.