This Outydse Soetkoekie recipe is the only sugar cookie recipe you will ever need. I have fallen in love with cookie dough. Seriously, that’s what happened here. Your hands are in charge of this magic mixture of ingredients, and with a little rolling and kneading – the perfect cookie dough is formed. Call me a hippie if you want – I don’t care – as a foodie – I LOVE working with cookie dough and getting my hands dirty!
The Best Sugar Cookie Recipe
I never thought this recipe would yield such an amazing buttery, crumbly and flaky cookie! When hubby asked for a batch of his gran’s soetkoekies, I couldn’t wait to try it out. This “Outydse Soetkoekie” recipe has been a family recipe and been passed down many generations. Her recipe is deliciously rich and sweet. However, there are varieties of the original soetkoekie with added warming spices., like ginger, cinnamon and cloves. Just add 5ml allspice for that nostalgic flavour.
For my foreign readers, this recipe is the epicenter of real South African bakes. Every South African would have had soetkoekies before or would have baked it themselves, sometime in their lifespan. This is seriously delicious stuff.
Sugary and Buttery Goodness
You might feel that there isn’t much about this recipe other than its origin that makes it special. It is a plain sweet and buttery cookie recipe, that’s probably been duplicated and tweaked over the years and used all over the world as a sweet biscuit – that serves as a base recipe for thousands of variations of cookies.
Easy Does It
This cookie recipe knocked my socks off. Just a simple combination of butter and sugar with, egg, flour and baking soda and cream of tartar. After the wet and dry ingredients combine, my first thought was that this dough will never roll, it is crumbly and dry – seems like it needed a second dose of butter. However, I took the recipe seriously and husband’s gran made it very clear to not add more wet ingredients. Your hands do all the work!
Beautiful Cookie Dough
It only took a few minutes before the perfect cookie dough was produced. Beautiful soft, flexible dough, that rolled out perfectly, baked perfectly and the result was a perfectly sweet and flaky, crispy and buttery outydse soetkoekie that melts in your mouth.
Try some more of my favourite cookie recipes:
| Prep Time | 15 min |
| Cook Time | 15 min |
| Servings | dozen |
- 3 cups flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 250 gr butter softnened
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 tablespoon creme of tartar
- 2 large eggs
- 5 ml ground allspice optional
Ingredients
| Rate this recipe! |
- First off in a large mixing bowl, sift all the dry ingredients together. You can add the allspice spice mixture here if you like a spicy cookie.
- Add pieces of the butter to the dry ingredients and work through with your hands and fingers until you are left with what looks like rough breadcrumbs.
- Whisk the eggs and vanilla, add them to the dry ingredients and work them through the dough as well – with your hands.
- At this stage I was thinking that something went wrong. The dough seemed very dry and it’s difficult to get the ingredients to incorporate more. I was tempted to add a little more butter or even a drop or two of water. DON’T ADD ANYTHING.
- Cover the dough with cling film and refrigerate for 15 - 20 minutes. Only break off a small piece of dough – big enough to fit in your hands – like the size of a cricket ball when you start to roll.
- Start by squeezing and rolling it in your hands, after a while the dough will incorporate all the ingredients and the beautiful soft delicate dough would have formed.
- Dust your surface with flour and roll out to about ½ a centimeter think.
- Cut with dusted cookie cutters, set on a greased pan and bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for about 10 - 15 minutes. It is difficult to say exactly how long they must bake as it depends on the size of your cookie, but after 10 minutes they should start to get a little color on the edges and bottom.
- You can add more time if you wish for a light brown cookie. However, I like my cookie paler – it just seems that the dough still has a very delicate texture in the middle.
Can I prepare a whole lot of dough and freeze it? Does it thaw well?
Hi Jessica,
You can freeze the dough for sure! It thaws great, just remember to take it out the freezer the night before.
Hi! Is this normal flour and what exactly is baking soda? Is it the same as baking powder? Can I use selfraising flour and leave the baking soda out all together?
Hi Maritza,
I used normal flour yes. Baking soda is “bicarbonate of soda” OR Sodium bicarbonate- and no, it’s not the same as baking powder. I haven’t tried these with self raising flour, so I don’t know how they will turn out. It’s a family recipe – hope you enjoy!
the recipe I’m looking for had All Spice as part of the ingredients. Delicious , please let me know your views
Pete
I regret an error in my earlier comment, I said the recipe I remembered had All Spice as one of the ingredients. that is an error for ‘All Spice” please read “Mixed
Spice”
Hi Pete, Thank you so much for the comment! Yes, usually a mixed spice is a combo of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg and is a great addition to this cookie as it will take on those flavours so well!
Hi Anina thanks for the recipes. The Soetkoekie recipe my mother used to make also had cinnamon ginger nutmeg and cloves in it. Gave it more pep. She did also make a sweet biscuit without spices. There could be a crossover with tha names as both were ‘soet’. My mother came from the Northwestern Cape so the names may have varied from place to place.
Hi there! Thank you so much for popping in to comment! There are so many different varieties of the soetkoekie. Your mother’s recipe sounds delicious. Will you be baking some for the festive season??
Baie goeie resep dankie. Ek bookmark hom nou
Enjoy Etienne!
Hi
Just something I learned from my Granny, if you do not have baking powder you use baking soda with creme of tartar for a substitute. Although your baking soda is much stronger than baking powder so you can’t just replace the same quantity. So if you need two teaspoons of baking powder, use a teaspoon of cream of tartar with a half-teaspoon of baking soda. This is just a guide.
Hope it helps.
Thank so much for this great tip Mia!
Hi Anina, i am teaching my grandaughter to bake and your recipe is perfect to start with, thank you. You when you have cut out the shapes you want then there is always some dough left, when i brought it all together it seemed a bit more firm so i was not sure if that is the correct way to work with the excess dough.
Sounds like you pretty much nailed it! Enjoy!
Anina, how long do you keep the dough covered in cling film before starting to “work” it with your hands, to start baking?
Hi Lynette, I just let the dough rest a bit in the fridge for 15 – 30 minutes.
Great recipe, thank you Anina. I battled to get the dough to stay together when rolling so added a tablespoon of milk which was fine. Suggest you update your recipe to add the step of letting the dough rest in the fridge for 15 – 30 minutes 😉
Thanks so much Brett!!
Thanks for this, I lost my recipe! For an added yummy-ness add 1 TSP cinnamon, 1 TSP mixed spice and 1,TSP ginger. Sooo good
Annie that sounds delicious! Thanks for stopping by!
Hi I want to make your soetkoekie recipe but see it calls for 1/2 TABLESPOON of creme of tartar. Is that correct??? Shouldnt it be 1/2 teaspoon as the baking soda reads. Please reply asap I’m busy making them
Many thanks
Lyn
Hi Lyn, apologies, I don’t have regular access to mail with the lockdown. Hope you managed to bake some cookies. The recipe does call for more creme of tartar to stabilise the dough and activate the baking soda. So those measurement in the recipe are correct. Hope they turned out great!
Awesome thanks I baked these koekies when children was still with me. now at 74 I can eat them all by myself in this loneniless lockdown🤗
Awesome thanks. I baked these koekies when children was still with me. Now at 74 I can eat the koekies all by myself in this loneniless lockdown period🤗
Hi Thelma, that’s awesome that you can have them all to yourself! Stay safe xxx
Hi Anina..my dough ate are clinging to my hands. What did i do wrong?
Hi Ursula! It might be that your butter was too warm. It should be softened and not melted. Also make sure to chill the dough before you handle it again and use a little extra flour for your surface when you roll it out. Hope this helps! xx
i am 84 years old and I have my grandmother’s recipe. Sorry but these are definitely not outydse soetkoekies. Where are your spices?
Hi John, Indeed original soetkoekies did have spice. As I explained in the text, this recipe is from my husbands gran, and is her favourite sugar cookie recipe. I added the option to add allspice in the recipe ingredients list if you want to add those lovely warming spices. Thanks for the comment!
Anina,
I always come back to your recipe. These are really good except that I add a little salt.
I love to mix mine with chocolate, nuts and dried fruit and I always get compliments.
However, I would like to make a batch of coffee ones with this recipe. I’ll be adding the freeze dried coffee with the dry ingredients. Will let you know how they turn out!
Thank you so much for a fantastic recipe!
A half a TABLESPOON of crème of tartar? Is this correct?
Hi there Anita I just wanted to know could I use margarine instead of butter for this recipe?
Hi Ghanaan, it can be done with margerine but I highly recommend using real butter for these. xxx