3-Ingredient Butter Cookies

A plate with butter cookies sprinkled with powdered sugar.

5 from 10 votes

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. They are perfect not only during the festive season, but also all year round.

Prep Time10

Cook Time18

Total Time28

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: International

Servings: cookies

Calories: 127kcal

Author: Daniela Apostol

Ingredients

200 g plain flour ( 1 ½ cups)
150 g butter ( ⅔ cup)
60 g icing sugar (confectioners' or powdered sugar) ½ cup

Instructions

Melt the butter and allow it to cool slighly.
Transfer the butter into a large mixing bowl, and sift in the icing sugar.
Use a spatula to combine the 2 ingredients.
Sift in the flour, and knead everything into a dough.
Cover 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 them onto a baking tray and use a fork to slightly flatten the cookies.
Bake for 15-17 minutes or until the cookies are slightly golden.
Remove them from the oven, and allow them to cool down on the tray for 5 minutes, before transferring them onto a cooling rack to cool down completely.
Sprinkle them with extra icing sugar.

Video

Notes

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.

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