These birthday cake sugar cookies are soft, sweet, and loaded with rainbow sprinkles - everything you could ever want from an easy birthday themed treat!
These birthday cake cookies are perfectly soft with a slight chewiness on the edges. This recipe comes together in a flash, much faster than an actual birthday cake. So if you want something simple and sweet for your birthday, these cookies will without a doubt make your day a little extra special!
For more cookie recipes, try Small Batch Chocolate Chip Cookies, Brown Butter Snickerdoodles, and Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Jump to:
Ingredient Notes
Ingredient quantities are listed in the recipe card below. Here you'll find notes on why I chose certain ingredients, as well as ingredient substitutions.
- All-Purpose Flour: You'll need about two cups of flour for this recipe.
- Baking Soda: Be sure your baking soda is fresh by testing it some vinegar!
- Salt: A must in all sweet recipes, so do not skip over it!
- Unsalted Butter: You'll need one stick of room temperature butter.
- Granulated Sugar: You'll need about ½ cup of sugar.
- Light Brown Sugar: Just a touch of brown sugar makes the flavor and texture of these cookies perfect!
- Egg: You'll only need one large egg for this recipe. Make sure it's room temperature so it will incorporate in the mixture properly!
- Vanilla: Vanilla is what makes birthday cake shine, so to achieve that classic birthday cake flavor, you'll want to use a good quality vanilla extract! Personally, I don't believe cake batter extract is necessary, but I won't stop you if want to use it!
- Sprinkles: I recommend using only jimmies sprinkles, as the other types of sprinkles tend to bleed into the dough.
Step by Step Instructions
STEP 1: Cream butter & sugars. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugars together until light & fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Alternatively, you can use a large mixing bowl and an electric hand mixer.
STEP 2: Add wet ingredients. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until fully incorporated.
STEP 3: Add dry ingredients. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Do not over-mix!
STEP 4: Add sprinkles. Gently fold in the sprinkles.
STEP 5: Portion & freeze cookie dough. Using a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop, portion the cookie dough and place on one baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Freeze the cookie dough for 30 minutes.
STEP 6: Bake. Place the frozen cookie dough on one prepared baking sheet placed about two inches apart. Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes. Allow cookies to cool completely on the baking sheet, and enjoy!
Expert Baking Tips
- Use a cookie scoop. Use a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop to portion the cookie dough into equally sized cookies!
- Freeze the portioned cookie dough. To ensure the cookies bake up to the right thickness, don't skip the freeze time!
- Scoot the cookies. Immediately after the cookies come out of the oven, use a large round cookie cutter or glass to scoot the edges and form a perfectly round cookie.
- Sandwich the cookies! Fill the cooled with a buttercream frosting, cream cheese frosting, or vanilla ice cream!
Recipe FAQs
These cookies get their birthday cake flavor from a lot of butter, sugar, and vanilla, NOT boxed cake mix. Using boxed birthday cake mix would make cookies far too cakey, but this recipe makes perfectly soft & thick cookies that are so good you can't eat just one.
Always use jimmies for baking! Any other type of sprinkle will melt or bleed into the batter. I love using Watkin's rainbow sprinkles, because they are made with no artificial dyes.
Yes, freeze the cookie dough balls for 30 minutes just before baking so they maintain their textured top. You can skip over the freeze time and bake them right away for 1-2 minutes less. They may loose their textured top, but they'll still be delicious!
Storage Tips
Store these birthday cake cookies in an airtight container for 3-5 days. You can freeze portioned cookie dough balls or baked cookies in a freezer bag for up to 3 months. No need to thaw them before baking!
Baking in Grams
All of the recipes on this blog are carefully developed with gram measurements so you can easily recreate them in your own kitchen with success. Volume measurements are extremely inaccurate and leave room for significant errors. Not all measuring cups are made equally, so your one cup of flour will be different from my one cup of flour. By providing precise measurements in grams (aside from minor ingredients, which are given in tsp/tbsp), you can make these recipes accurately and with less cleanup! All you need is this kitchen scale.
If this still isn't enough to convince you, I have provided volume measurements in the recipe card. If you are interested in understanding the conversions, this is the best conversion chart.
But trust me, once you try baking in grams you'll never turn back!
Happy baking! x
Other birthday recipes you'll love
If you tried this recipe, I'd love to know how it turned out for you! Leave a star rating & review below and post a picture (or video!) on Instagram and tag me so I can see your bakes! Not ready to make this recipe yet? Click the heart button on the right of your screen to save it for later 🙂
Birthday Cake Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 280 g 2 ⅓ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 170 g ¾ cup unsalted butter, room temp
- 150 g ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 106 g ½ cup light brown sugar
- 1 egg, room temp
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 48 g ¼ cup rainbow jimmies sprinkles
Instructions
- In a medium size bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugars together until light & fluffy, about 2-3 minutes.
- Add the egg and vanilla and beat until fully incorporated.
- Scrape down the bowl, then add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Do not over-mix!
- Gently fold in the sprinkles.
- Using a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop, portion the cookie dough and place on one baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Freeze the cookie dough for 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, and line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Place the frozen cookie dough on one prepared baking sheet placed about two inches apart.
- Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes. Allow cookies to cool completely on the baking sheet, and enjoy!
Notes
- Use a cookie scoop. Use a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop to portion the cookie dough into equally sized cookies!
- Freeze the portioned cookie dough. To ensure the cookies bake up to the right thickness, don't skip the freeze time!
- Scoot the cookies. Immediately after the cookies come out of the oven, use a large round cookie cutter or glass to scoot the edges and form a perfectly round cookie.
Ticked Off says
Well after putting all the ingredients together and adding them to bowl, I then see there's no baking powder in one section of this recipe, but unfortunately for me, I saw the section that called for baking powder located on the actual recipe posted below!
One would think thats quite an important detail to catch when proofreading recipe article?
Now I have a wasted batch of dough that has bathing baking soda and baking powder?
Can you please clarify so this doesn't happen to someone else.
Sloane says
The recipe is meant to have both baking powder and baking soda.
Debbie says
On the 2x recipe, are you saying 1 cup and 1 stick of butter? Thank you.
Sloane says
Hi Debbie,
The recipe card does not adjust the number of sticks - sorry! So yes, if you were to double the recipe it would be 2 sticks (or 1 cup) of butter.
Debbie says
1 cup of butter equals 2 sticks of butter not 1 on your 2X recipe .
FS says
Tasted so good but they didn’t flatten at all. They kept their scoop shape.
Corinne says
What size scoop do you use for these cookies?
Sloane says
I used a 2 tbsp cookie scoop!
Holly says
Loved these cookies! They actually taste like birthday cake😍
★★★★★
Monica says
Can you freeze these cookies?
Sloane says
Yes! You can freeze the baked cookies for about 3 months or the pre-scooped cookie dough for cookies on demand!
Ana says
Really delicious! I didn't have time to bake them right away so I refrigerated the scooped cookie dough overnight. Baked them the following morning with no issues. Thanks for the recipe!
★★★★★
Anne says
Delicious, soft and easy to make! These cookies are a new family favourite. They’re amazing!
★★★★★
Pat says
I do not know how to convert could you please tell me what they are in regular measurements. They look like they are probably very delicious. That you,.
Sloane says
This is the best conversion chart: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/learn/ingredient-weight-chart
Carly says
By far the most delicious cookies I've ever had! So easy to make and SO SO good!!