Best Cut-Out Sugar Cookies with Fresh Milled Flour

These homemade sugar cookies with fresh milled flour come together so easily with little hands-on time, resulting in tender and buttery cookies!

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If you’re trying to cut back on the amount of white flour that you’re using at home, these sugar cookies with fresh milled flour or any whole wheat flour is a great way to switch up some of your sweet treats. I don’t believe using whole grains should be seen as a compromise, and with a few tips and tricks, you can make delicious sugar cookies. Tender and full of flavor, whole wheat cookies don’t have to be dense or overly wheat-y. Add a little coarse sugar or buttercream and watch as everyone gobbles them up!

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Preparing your Whole Wheat Flour

Choosing the Right Grain Berries

This recipe works great with either fresh milled flour or your favorite whole wheat pastry flour. If you are going to mill your own, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. When using freshly-milled flour for sugar cookies it’s a good idea to use soft wheat berries such as soft white wheat or ancient grains such as spelt. These grains have a lower protein content and less gluten which makes them a great option for cookie recipes. When making pastry such as cookies, we want to minimize gluten development for a tender and chewy texture. If you don’t keep a stock of these berries that shouldn’t stop you from baking cookies, and I’m a firm believer in using what you have 🙂 

To ensure that our sugar cookies have a soft, fine crumb, we want to mill our flour on the finest setting possible. For an even softer cookie, you can use a fine mesh sifter to sift out the larger bran flakes, leaving you with a very soft, fine flour. However, this step is totally optional and I often skip it. 

Why Fresh Milled Flour in Cut-Out Sugar Cookies? 

The most obvious but important reason to cook or bake with fresh flour is that you know exactly what you’re getting. When using a home mill, you take the whole wheat berry and mill a fine flour that retains every component. Grains in their complete form contain many vital nutrients as well as fiber for belly health.

When you purchase white flour from the store, the bran and germ of the wheat kernels have been removed taking much of the fiber and nutrients with them. Even regular whole wheat flour is often made by taking white flour and adding bran back in. During the commercial milling process, the good oil that is found within the wheat berry is removed in order to extend the shelf life of the flour. Often preservatives are used as well. Just like with anything you make from scratch, there’s security in knowing how food is created from start to finish and milling your own flour gives you this knowledge. 

Additionally, fresh milled flour has a complex flavor profile that’s a little sweeter and a little nuttier than the grains you find on a store shelf. Compare freshly ground wheat berries to coffee beans and you start to understand how time can make them a little stale. For the best flavor, it’s best to use milled wheat within 3 days but it can last on a shelf for 7-10 days. 

Gather Your Ingredients

Butter

Using real butter is so important in this cookie recipe to get the right flavor and height. Use room temperature butter but make sure that it is not too warm. Your butter should not be melty. As you cream together the butter and the sugar, you are actually incorporating air into the butter that will give your cookies good rise and prevent them from flattening. If your butter is too warm, it will not be able to hold as much air and you will end up with flat cookies. I like to get my butter out of the fridge 30 minutes prior to mixing my dough. 

Sugar

For best results, we are going to use white sugar to sweeten our cookies. I don’t recommend substituting honey or maple syrup in this recipe for two reasons. First, we need the sugar crystals to cut through our butter, whipping it and incorporating air. Honey and maple syrup cannot do this. Also, any type of liquid sweetener or brown sugar can make our cookie dough too soft and will result in flat, crisp cookies. 

Eggs

To help hold the cookies together.

Baking Powder

To help give our cookies more lift.

Flour

This whole wheat sugar cookie recipe calls for 100% whole wheat flour. I use fresh ground soft white wheat flour, but you can definitely make this with store bought wheat flour. Try to choose a wheat flour with a fine grind, and if grinding your own flour, choose the finest setting on your grain mill. If your family is new to whole grains, you can certainly go with a 50/50 blend of whole wheat and all-purpose flour. 

Salt

Whatever you use for your table salt will be just fine!

Coarse Sugar or Buttercream

Choose your favorite topping for these sugar cookies, whether it be your favorite frosting recipe, sanding sugar, or a simple sprinkling of turbinado sugar. Check out my all-time favorite cookie buttercream recipe!

Time

Time is by far the most important ingredient in this recipe! After you make your cookie dough, you will want to store it away in the fridge for 24 hours. I know that this is the hardest part of the recipe, and you’re going to be tempted to go ahead and bake the cookies. Please don’t. Take a bite of dough to treat yourself then place the rest in the fridge. By waiting 24 hours, you give the wheat flour time to absorb the liquid from the dough and to soften and release sugars. I recommend this step with any cookie recipe, but it is especially important with whole wheat cookies. Your finished product will be soft, chewy cookies with a nutty taste and a caramelized, rich flavor that only comes from time. 

Tips for Baking Better Sugar Cookies with Fresh Milled Flour

Cream your fats and sugars for at least 5 minutes. 

The first step in this chocolate chip cookie recipe is to cream your butter and sugars. This is such an important step and should not be overlooked. As you blend together the sugar with the butter, you are incorporating air into your batter that will keep your cookies from flattening like pancakes as they bake. Use butter that is room temperature but no warmer. Mix in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment for at least five minutes and you’ll notice that during this time the butter will go from a pale yellow to an almost white color. This is a good sign that your cookies are going to turn out awesome!

Fully incorporate your eggs. 

There is a fear when making cookies that you’re going to over beat your eggs and ruin your cookies and, as a result, it is easy to actually under beat the dough at this point. You want your eggs to be fully incorporated and evenly distributed. Let the dough beat for about one minute. 

Add your dry ingredients at one time and pulse in until just incorporated. 

The moment you add your flour mixture into your batter, gluten begins to form. More gluten development equals tougher, dry cookies. In order to have nice soft, tender cookies, only mix your dry ingredients on low speed until just blended. You should not be able to see any dry flour in your batter or streaks of dry ingredients. For cut-out sugar cookies, we want to roll our cookies out quickly and confidently so that we don’t overwork the dough at this stage. 

Let your dough chill for 24 hours

When baking with freshly milled flour, or any wheat flour for that matter, it is so important to give the flour plenty of time to fully absorb the liquid. This allows the bran to soften and results in much better whole wheat sugar cookies! Your cookie dough can stay in the fridge for up to three days prior to baking. 

Roll Out and Bake your Sugar Cookies with Fresh Milled Flour

After the cookie dough has chilled for 24 hours, take it out of the fridge and plop it onto your work surface that has been lightly dusted with flour. At this point the dough will be very stiff and may take a little muscle to roll out! Try to work quickly and confidently to roll your dough out with a rolling pin to a 1/4 inch thickness. You want your cut-out cookies to be cold when they hit the oven so they will hold their shape during the bake. 

Use cookie cutters or a canning lid to cut out your sugar cookies with fresh milled flour and place them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper leaving about an inch of space between each cookie. They will puff up slightly as they bake but shouldn’t spread. If you are decorating your cookies with sanding sugar or coarse sugar, sprinkle it on generously right before popping them in the oven. 

Bake your cookies on 335 degrees for 10-12 minutes, until they are just beginning to turn golden brown. Remove from the oven and let them cool on the cookie sheet for about five minutes before removing them to a cooling rack. If decorating with buttercream or royal icing, let your sugar cookies cool completely prior to icing them. 

Let Us Know What You Think!

Do whole grain desserts have a place in your house? If you give this recipe a try, we’d love to hear how it goes! Leave a comment or tag us on Instagram! Happy Baking!

Handy Tools

Soft White Wheat Berries or Organic Spelt Berries

Kitchen Scale 

My Favorite, Most Beautiful Mixing Bowl

Favorite Cookie Cutters

Silicone Mat

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Whole Wheat Pasta

100% Whole Wheat Sourdough

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