Authentic sugar cookie recipe from the early 1900s using old-fashioned, whole ingredients with a flavor most have never experienced before!
My paternal Grandmother was not much of a cook, but wow, could she ever bake!
Every year during the first week of December, she would go on a baking binge. Over one weekend, she would make dozens of cookies for the Christmas holiday.
My two favorites were her incredible gingerbread cookies and the old-fashioned sugar cookie recipe below. She and Grandpa lived down the street. So, my siblings and I could bike over after school and grab a couple for an afternoon snack.
It’s hard to believe, but if Grandma was alive today, she would be over 125 years old! Born in 1890, she grew up without fast food, vegetable oils, refined flour, or GMOs.
As you can see from her yellowed, handwritten recipe card below, butter and cream were considered essential for cookies back then.
Eating plenty of nourishing fats with your sweets greatly mitigates the blood sugar spike, thus reducing the chances of a mood-altering sugar crash later.
Compare this simple, wholesome 7 ingredients list to the nasty, dangerously lowfat sugar cookies at the supermarket!
The ingredients’ lists are eye-popping including synthetically fortified refined flour, GMO sugar and rancid polyunsaturated oils, chemicals, synthetic flavors, and additives of all kinds.
I’m thankful that I grew up knowing what real sugar cookies taste like. This helped me to avoid the temptation of those sugar cookie imposters of today.
I know that Grandma would be thrilled that I am sharing this recipe for others to learn from and enjoy.
Sugar Cookies from the Early 1900s
If you notice from Grandma’s well-worn index card below, she wrote that the recipe came from the “Home Bureau”. What was that you might wonder?
Home Bureaus were established across New York State in the early twentieth century to provide information on household economics and management to its citizens.
My Grandparents lived in Chautauqua County, New York until they retired and moved to Florida in the 1950s. That is where she originally came across this recipe for sugar cookies in the early 1900s!
This Recipe Only Needed One Substitution
The only change I’ve made to my Grandma’s sugar cookie recipe with my own family is the choice of flour.
I use sprouted flour made with ancient grain to add additional nutrition and digestibility to the cookies (see my frequently updated shopping guide for quality sources).
Feel free to use whatever grain-based flour you choose, including a homemade gluten-free flour mix.
However, note that I have not tested this recipe for sugar cookies using anything but sprouted ancient grain. If you make them with another flour, please post in the comments and tell us all how they turned out!
Make Sugar Cookie Cake if Pressed for Time!
If you are pressed for time and can’t bake three dozen individual cookies, spread the batter out on a large pizza pan and make a sugar cookie cake!
This recipe for a chocolate cookie cake describes the process in more detail.
Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies
My Grandmother's sugar cookie recipe reinvented using sprouted ancient grain flour to add a boost of nutrition and extra digestibility.
Ingredients
- 4 cups sprouted flour sifted
- 1/4 cup cream raw or pasteurized, NOT ultrapasteurized
- 1 cup butter softened, preferably grassfed
- 2 eggs well beaten, preferably pastured or free range
- 2 cups cane sugar preferably organic
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg preferably organic
- 1 Tbl vanilla extract
- 1 tsp sea salt
Instructions
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Mix cream and softened butter in a large bowl (I use these).
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Blend in sugar.
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Blend in eggs and vanilla extract.
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Sift baking powder, salt and ground nutmeg together with the sprouted flour.
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Slowly add flour mixture to the wet ingredients a cup at a time. Blend well before adding the next cup.
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When all the flour has been blended into the cookie dough, start to form cookies on baking sheets lined with unbleached parchment paper. Spread them a good distance apart, as the cookies will expand a lot while baking!
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Bake cookies at 400 F/ 204C for 10-12 minutes. Remove from oven when the cookies are very light brown.
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Repeat until all the cookies are baked.
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Cool and store in airtight containers or a cookie jar.
Recipe Notes
Expeller pressed coconut oil may be substituted for butter. I do not recommend virgin coconut oil for this recipe as it would add a faint coconut flavor to the cookies.
Coconut cream may be substituted for dairy cream.
Sprouted gluten-free flour may be substituted as needed.
We buy the regular einkorn from Jovial. Would that work?
Yes, that should work fine.
I’m looking forward to trying the recipe! But I also wanted to add that I’ve been successfully reducing sugar in pretty much every baking recipe I’ve tried. Most recipes taste overly sweet to me if I follow them to the letter. As a trial, I usually reduce the amount by a third, and if that doesn’t affect the recipe, I’ll cut to 1/2 the original amount. Also, adding more eggs generally makes baked goods more fluffy and cakelike. And if a recipe calls for vegetable oil, I’ll use organic extra-virgin olive oil; historically, mediterranean cultures have used olive oil as long as northern europeans used butter–check out “Extra Virginity” by Tom Mueller if you want to know more about the history (and more important what to look for in legit olive oil).
Has anyone out there tried sprouted spelt flour with this recipe yet? I have some just finished, but don’t have einkorn sprouted yet. Thoughts?
Uh, sorry – feeling kinda stupid here. “Start to make cookies”? Roll and flatten? Make a log and slice? I can hardly wait to make this a family heirloom too. My grandmother bought into the newfangled foods as they came out – Crisco, Velveeta, ugh! She still made keshka (blood sausage with buckwheat) and other traditional Ukrainian savoury foods, but the baking and desserts kinda slid into processed.
Thanks for this and for the dairy sub recommendations. Currently eating dairy free for my allergic nursling and I look forward to trying this recipe out. My husband loves a good sugar cookie so it’ll be interesting to see if he likes this one with the dairy free subs. I’ll report back after I’ve made them. Thanks!!
Is there salt in the original recipe?
As you can see from my Grandma’s recipe card, there is 1 tsp of salt. It’s a bit hard to read.
THANK YOU!!!!
It’s crazy on recipes sites people describe their recipes as “old family recipes passed down through the generations” and its got like instant pudding or a bunch of modern processed ingredients.
Your recipe card is an amazing treasure. Finally something legit!
I know my oma was a good cook, I just wish the family had insisted she write it down. All her methods and old world techniques were from memory.
An old fashioned recipe really needs to be prior to 1920 else it’s probably not worth much or has been changed quite a bit for the worse by younger generations. Crisco came in around 1921 or so … that’s when all the trouble started! From that point on, heart disease was on a march upward. As butter consumption declined and was slowly replaced by vegetable oils and margarine in the decades following 1920 , the situation only continued to get worse. The flawed studies against saturated fat and cholesterol in the 1960’s really caused the momentum against butter and other healthy fasts to accelerate. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/the-9-benefits-of-cholesterol-in-the-diet/
These look delicious! If I use soaked and sprouted Einkorn flour will my gluten sensitive daughter be able to enjoy them?
Some gluten sensitive people (like my husband) eat einkorn just fine. Other’s don’t. Your call.
Thank you so much for a printable version of the recipe; would love to try it with a sugar
You’re welcome! I know a number of readers have wanted this feature for awhile, and I am so glad to have this done to make it easier for everyone 🙂
Hi! Firstly, thank you for the work you are doing, I love all the amazing content you provide! It has helped me a lot.
As I live in Sweden and can’t find a GAPS practitioner to work with I would greatly appreciate it if you could answer two questions I have regarding the diet. I am on stage 3 of the intro (trying to heal my Hashimotos) and have just started taking the bio kult probiotic. I read in the book the therapeutic level should be around 8 capsules per day. Should I take all 8 capsules (or whatever amount it will be) at once in the morning with still water or should I have 2-3 capsules with every meal?
Also, I know I should work my way up to a therapeutic level, however I am not having any reactions to them at all (I have been eating a diet very high in fermented foods for about 5 years), how do I know what is my therapeutic level? Thanks!
I would suggest doing a phone of Skype consult with a GAPS Practitioner if you don’t have one in your area. I know there are numerous practices that probably do this, but the one I am aware of is biodynamicwellness.com