Danish Salted Butter Cookies

These Danish Salted Butter Cookies are light, crisp, and perfectly delicate, just like the classic cookies from the iconic blue tin. With an irresistible melt-in-your-mouth texture and rich buttery flavor, this simple recipe delivers bakery-quality results at home.

Made with just five basic pantry ingredients, they’re incredibly easy to bake and a must-make treat for the holiday season (or anytime a buttery cookie craving strikes).

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Please let me know if you have any questions about this recipe. I read all the comments myself and I try to help as soon as I can. I have readers from all levels of comfort and experience in the kitchen on my site, and I’ve tried to answer some of your questions already in the post. But if I’ve missed anything, please feel free to leave a comment and ask.

What is the origin of these butter cookies?

These butter cookies originate from Denmark and became widely popular in the 20th century thanks to Royal Dansk and Jacobsens brands. They’re made with butter, flour, and sugar. And they’re very similar to shortbread cookies.

The key difference between these cookies and shortbread lies in their ratios: Shortbread has more butter, less sugar, and often no eggs, making it denser and crumbly; while Danish cookies have a lower butter-to-flour ratio with more sugar and sometimes eggs or cornstarch for a lighter, crisper, melt-in-your-mouth cookie.

How to make

These buttery cookies get their great flavor and texture from high-quality butter, complemented by vanilla. And the salt in this recipe brings out the flavors even more. I have some great tips and tricks along with pictures for you in the post, but be sure to scroll down to the printable recipe card for full ingredient amounts and instructions. Oh, and if you want to read more great tips for baking, check out my Baking Tips article.

A typical tin of butter cookies contains various assorted shapes, so you don’t have to worry, you don’t have to pipe out these cookies (like many recipes have you do). These ones are cut out cookies with two round cookie or biscuit cutters. Fluted cookie cutters make wonderfully shaped cookies as well. If you don’t have cookie cutters, you can use the rim of a drinking glass to get the shape.

The dough could even be rolled into a log, chilled, and sliced instead of using cookie cutters.

Ingredients tips

These cookies are very simple and have simple ingredients, so go with good quality ingredients – real butter, no artificial colors or preservatives.

You can use an equal amount of vanilla bean paste for the vanilla extract if you want those pretty little flecks of vanilla in your cookies.

Mix the dough

Combine butter, granulated sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl. Using an electric handheld mixer or stand mixer on high speed and beat until very light in color and fluffy in texture, about 5 to 8 minutes. Creaming well will result in lighter cookies as opposed to a dense heavy batch of cookies.

Normally I’m all about mixing cookies by hand, but the electric mixer is very helpful to aid in the creaming process for this recipe.

Beat in 1 of the eggs and reduce the mixing speed to low.

Slowly mix in 2 cups of the flour.

Form dough into a disk and wrap in plastic. Chill the dough disk for about 2 hours or overnight until it’s firm.

Preheat to 350° F. Let disk of dough sit at room temperature until softened, about 15 minutes. Roll out dough on a lightly floured work space, until about 3/8″ thick.

Cut out and bake

Cut out rounds of dough with the large circle cutter (about 3 inches in diameter) and cut out centers with the smaller cutter (about 1 & 1/2 inches in diameter). I have a set like this with lots of different sizes that I like. Place the cut-out dough onto a baking sheet lined with a silicone mat or parchment paper.

Use a silicone baking mat or parchment paper on your baking sheet to hold onto the dough and prevent too much spreading, also promoting even browning on the bottom of the cookie. Don’t place the cookies directly on a greased or buttered pan because this will create a greasy bottom and causes the cookies to spread. Also, I swear by these air insulated baking sheets for great baking with even browning.

Space the cookies 1 & ½ inches apart on the baking sheet. Pat scraps and chill again until needed.

Beat remaining egg in a small bowl with 1 teaspoon water; brush cookies with egg wash; sprinkle with sanding sugar.

Finishing garnish notes:

I’ve tested several different garnishing toppers. I think sanding sugar and turbinado sugar work great. They both will give a nice crunch and pretty texture. The golden color of turbinado or sugar in the raw makes a beautiful finished color.

I’ve also tested Fleur de sel and pretzel salt as finishers. The Fleur de sel is amazing; it adds just a lovely sophisticated salty punch to the cookie. But, it’s just a light sprinkling. I think the pretzel salt was nice, but easy to overdo, so it isn’t my first choice. Also, I tested the cookies without any sugar or salt, because in all honestly, I don’t care for cookies with finishing sugar on top. I find the finishing sugar to be distracting. So, for me, I like to bake some of these without any sugar on top. But, the nice thing about baking them for yourself is that you can make them however you like!

Continue making cookies

Chill for at least 15 minutes.

Don’t skip the step for chilling the dough. This prevents the dough from spreading while baking, ensuring that the cookies keep their shape. Also, the sugar becomes more pronounced as it chills for a better flavor, texture, and golden brown color.

Bake, rotating baking sheets halfway through, until edges are golden brown, 10–15 minutes. Avoid overbaking the cookies; bake them just until the edges turn golden brown.

Transfer the baking sheets to wire racks; let the cookies cool on the baking sheets to set. Then, remove the sheets and let the cookies cool completely on the wire racks. Allow the cookies to cool completely before storing them.

Repeat with chilled scraps and remaining egg wash and sugar.

You’ll probably have a little egg wash leftover. I always like to pop the leftover egg wash in the microwave for a little protein filled snack.

Troubleshooting

 Why did they spread out and lose their shape? There could be a few reasons your cookies spread:

• These cookies contain a high amount of butter, and spread because the butter in the cookie dough melts in the oven. If there isn’t enough flour to hold onto the melted butter, the cookies will over-spread. Make sure you’re measuring your flour by lightly scooping it into the measuring cup and then leveling off with the flat side of a knife. And, yes, weighing flour is much more accurate, but I find that the majority of my readers don’t want to weigh their ingredients.
• If the dough is too warm when placed on the baking sheet, it will spread more while baking. Try chilling the dough for 15–30 minutes before piping and baking. And never use a warm or hot cookie sheet, always let the cookie sheets cool before baking a second batch on them. I actually own about a dozen cookie sheets so that I can rotate through them all when baking multiple batches.
• Overmixing the dough can warm up the butter and make it too soft. This is another reason it’s good to refrigerate the dough well before baking the cookies.
• Make sure your oven is preheated to the correct temperature. I also like to let it preheat for a few minutes after the bell chimes that its reached temperature. This will help to make sure there are no hot spots in the oven. Use an oven thermometer to make sure the temperature is accurate.
• You can also add an extra 2 to 3 tablespoons of flour to the cookie dough to help stop the spread.

Storage

The cookie dough can be made and refrigerated up to 2 days in advance. Simply wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to cut out and bake. The premade dough can be frozen for up to 1 month.

The baked cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week.

For longer storage, place them in a freezer safe airtight container and pop them in the freezer for up to 3 months. Let frozen cookies thaw at room temperature for about an hour before serving.

They make great gifts too! I often see pretty Christmassy tins at the grocery store, Target, Wal-Mart, even the dollar store. Line the tin with paper cupcake liners and stack a few cookies in each liner. These cookies are even sturdy enough to be shipped. Check out my guide for how to ship baked goods.

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