15 Ways To Elevate Store-Bought Sugar Cookie Mix For Cookies That Taste (And Look) Homemade

No matter what holidays you are celebrating, the fall and winter months seem to be the peak time for cookie making. Cookies are a great way to say thanks, show appreciation, or simply treat yourself. They are great gifts to take to parties, have on hand for cookie swaps, and give to service providers like your neighborhood mail carrier. You can't possibly buy gifts for everyone, but a nice box or platter of cookies means a lot.

But maybe you are intimidated by the kitchen, feel like you don't have the time, or have convinced yourself you cannot bake. Well, think again. Every good baker and chef has tricks to make things faster and easier. It might be surprising that most, if not all, rely on frozen, refrigerated, or premixed recipes of some sort throughout the year. And it's only right to share that knowledge. For instance, regardless of your baking prowess, there are quite a few cookies anyone can make, starting with a simple store-bought sugar cookie mix, a little imagination, and some helpful tips.

As you go through this list, think about what you want in look, textures, taste, and color. Consider personalizing them for the people you are gifting. And be sure you're adding your own personality! There are a lot of options on this list. Even more options if you mix them together.

Betty Crocker's sugar cookie mix is very handy for cutout cookies, as the recipe for upgrading the dough is right there on the package. But there are many mixes available, like Duncan Hines, Krusteaz, and King Arthur. To make cutout cookies from a regular sugar cookie mix, simply add a few tablespoons of all-purpose flour to get the dough to a rolling consistency. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour at a time until the dough starts to form a firm ball. Chill your dough in the fridge for 30 minutes, flour your work surface, and then get to rolling and cutting. 

Decorating these cookies is the fun part. And when you decorate them yourself, no one is going to think you grabbed them from the store or used a mix. All you need is some royal icing, which you can buy already made, get a mix, or make your own. Royal icing is easy to work with. The icing hardens as it sets and stays put. So, you can get really creative with the designs. Add some food coloring to make whatever color you imagine, and use the colors one at a time for precise decoration. 

Your options are pretty endless with royal-iced sugar cookies. And it elevates the flavor and look of the cookie to bakery store levels. Royal icing has a distinct crunch and creamy, sweet flavor that melts in the mouth. It's a holiday classic sure to stand out. 

The most important thing to remember when adding dry ingredients to a mix is to stay at 1 cup or less. This allows for creativity and doesn't mess with the dough or packaged bake times. Of course, chocolate chip cookies are a fan favorite and super easy to make by throwing a cup of chips into your sugar cookie mix. Instantly, you have a gooey, rich chocolate chip cookie instead of a plain sugar cookie. And the variety of sizes and flavors of chocolate chips allows you to get even more creative if you want. 

You should easily be able to find milk chocolate and white chocolate. But look around, and you might notice dark chocolate and different levels of cacao. You might even spot York dark chocolate and peppermint-flavored chips. All of these options offer ways to add levels of richness, sweetness, and creaminess to your cookies. It's also fun to mix it up. Add white and dark chocolate for a visually interesting cookie and a broader flavor profile.

Get even more creative with the look of your cookie by grabbing mini chips, chunks, or nibs. Nibs offer a chunky, robust look to cookies and give a bigger bite of chocolate taste. Minis are fun and generally not something you will find in a store-bought option. So, by simply adding something simple, you can create a homemade taste and aesthetic. 

Much like chocolate chips, peanut butter chips are fairly easy to come by at your local grocery store. And the flavor of peanut butter goes a long way, giving you an easy option for making a batch of super-rich cookies. If you want to stay with the singular peanut butter profile, that's a popular choice. You can take them up a level by adding some crushed peanuts for a homemade look and crunchy texture. Keep the 1-cup rule in mind. And if you want to go the extra mile, think about sprinkling the top of your cookies with some sea salt before or after baking, while they're still hot. The salt will elevate the sugar and peanut flavors and give your cookie a little snap. 

You can also vary your cookie profile by using ½ cup of each: chocolate and peanut butter chips. Chocolate and peanut butter go great together. Get creative with the chips' shapes and sizes. By adding large or small chunks of chocolate and regular-sized peanut butter chips, you can make an everyday cookie look and taste extraordinary. Again, these simple ingredients completely redefine the type of cookie you've just made. The sugar cookie is merely a subtly sweet foundation.

Have you ever had a blondie? If so, you know how good they are. If not, now may be the time. While butterscotch chips are not the most popular choice in the baking aisle, they do serve a great purpose. Butterscotch is the defining flavor of a blondie, and it's a delicious treat when you put that in cookie form.

Nestle makes butterscotch chips, but you may also be able to find store brands alongside them at a lower cost. If you are a big fan of butterscotch, go all in by adding 1 cup of these to your mix. The butterscotch will add depth to your sugar cookie profile. If you want to transform your sugar cookie dough into a full, rich blondie profile, simply add half butterscotch and half white chocolate chips. Get fancy by sprinkling a little sea salt and brown sugar on top for taste, texture, and looks. Note that these chips can easily be mistaken for peanut butter. So, best label these as our eyes start eating before our mouths and palates like to know what they're getting.

Dried fruits seem to come out of the woodwork when winter rolls around. This is the time of year when fruitcake makes its appearance, after all. So, when it comes to baking, you have several options to choose from. Of course, you have raisins. But you also have more innovative choices like dried cranberries, cherries, dates, and figs. All of which are delightfully seasonal, highly flavorful, and offer different profiles and pairing options to transform your sugar cookie dough.

Dried cherries pair exceptionally with dark chocolate and give a sophisticated taste and look with their dark colors. Dried cranberries work great with white chocolate chips, offering both a creamy sweetness and a hint of tartness. Dates and figs pair well with walnuts or pecans. If using those, try adding a few dashes of cinnamon to your dry ingredients. All of these pairings look beautiful when baked with their different hues. And each pair offers a completely different cookie with chewy and creamy textures. 

It's amazing how many chopped, diced, whole, and slivered nuts you will come across in the baking aisle. And generally, all serve different purposes. Almonds are classic, crisp, and nutty; hazelnuts are very unique; pecans can add a buttery sweetness. Walnuts offer a more succulent and earthy flavor, and macadamia nuts are sweet and silky. However, generally, nuts are not used on their own in cookies. Like dried fruits, they offer good pairings.

Macadamia nuts pair well with white chocolate and cherries. Pecans and walnuts are perfect with chocolate or peanut butter. If you've ever had Ferrero Rocher, you know hazelnuts go great with milk chocolate. Add that combo and call them Ferrero Rocher-inspired cookies. If you want something heavier, like dark chocolate, reach for chopped almonds. All of these options give your cookies multiple textures along with a great chunky homemade look and distinct flavor profiles. The sugar cookie really offers an edible, sweet tray to serve up these delicious combos.

Lemon cookies are zesty, refreshing, and oh so flavorful. And they can serve as a nice palate cleanser after a big meal. So, keep them in mind for dinner parties. And when using a sugar cookie mix, it only takes minutes to transform that mix into this delicious treat.

Depending on how much lemon flavor you want, this cookie mix is easily modified. For an "is that lemon I'm tasting" flavor, add 2 tablespoons of bottled lemon juice to your mix with the wet ingredients. Bottled juice has a more muted flavor than fresh juice. For a more pronounced lemon flavor, use freshly squeezed juice from one large, plump lemon. If you're looking for even more, add 1 teaspoon of that juiced lemon's zest.

To give these cookies a nice homemade look, finish them off by sifting powdered sugar over the top once they cool. For a nice, sweet, creamy addition, go for the ultimate lemon cookie and top it with an easy-to-make lemon cookie icing. 

Decorative sugar — also known as sugar topping, sugar crystals, and sparkling sugar — is large granulated sugar that is often colored and found in the baking aisle among the sprinkles. This is generally used for aesthetic purposes, but it does elevate a simple sugar cookie by offering a crunchy texture and colorful look. During the holidays, it can be fun to decorate using green and red together or separately. 

Top your cookies with sugar after they bake and cool. This will make sure the colors don't bleed. To get the sugar to stick to the cookie, simply add a thin glaze of simple syrup over the top and sprinkle. Simple syrup is generally kept with the mixers at our grocery store. If you can't find it around the other sugars, that's a good place to look. These cookies will have the nice look of a store-bought sugar cookie, but making them this way will give them a soft, homemade texture. 

Finishing sugar, or flavored sanding sugar, is not to be confused with decorative sugar. Finishing sugar is generally flavored and can come in brightly colored or plain varieties. These sugars can be used across the spectrum of baked goods and even drinks.

In 2025, McCormick dropped seasonal finishing sugars with flavors such as apple cider, salted caramel, chocolate hazelnut, and candy cane. So, you can see the range of tastes that can be achieved. And having something unique, like an apple cider flavor, will create a homemade taste people can't find in your average store-bought cookie mix. While some finishing sugars are seasonal, you can find many others all year long in a wide variety of flavors. 

Finishing sugars are generally meant to withstand heat, so you can go ahead and sprinkle them on before baking. They will add the named flavor to your sugar cookie and give you an easy way to flavor and enhance your mix. If you want to ice your cookies, sprinkle finishing sugar on top of that as well. Use royal icing if you want it to harden, or simply pick up a can of frosting from the cake aisle if you want more flavors to choose from.

Sprinkles don't offer very much as far as taste goes, even when using chocolate ones. But they are fun, and they do provide a nice chew to texture. During the holiday months, you can generally find winter and holiday-shaped sprinkles in stores, which will definitely offer a homemade look. But if you can't find those, rainbow sprinkles are never a bad way to go. And like decorative sugar, you can easily apply these and get them to stick after baking by glazing your cookies with a thin layer of simple syrup before sprinkling.

You can also easily transform plain sugar cookies into confetti cookies by adding about ½ cup of rainbow sprinkles into your dough mixture. This changes both the overall look and the texture, and they are fun for kids and adults. Top with chocolate or buttercream frosting and then dip them into a bowl of sprinkles to get more color and coverage, and elevate your cookies to a sweeter, creamier level.

Cinnamon and sugar are great ways to elevate sugar cookies at two different levels. By rolling your raw dough in a cinnamon sugar mixture before baking, you will create a bit of spice for the taste and a crystallized texture to the crust. Combine ¼ cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon together in a bowl and mix together. Scoop your dough, roll it into a ball, and then roll the ball into the cinnamon sugar mixture and bake.

If you want to transform your sugar cookie mix into an incredibly tasty snickerdoodle, it doesn't get much easier. Add 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar to your sugar cookie dry mixture and combine it thoroughly before adding any wet items. Then do exactly what you did above — scoop, roll, roll, bake to add a little more spice and a snappy texture to the outside. The cream of tartar is going to create the signature snickerdoodle taste by adding just a hint of tang.

You might be surprised how many candy pieces are already available to throw into your bakes. For instance, Heath has chocolate-covered English toffee bits, and M&M's also makes colorful baking bits. These are just as easy as adding chocolate or peanut butter chips, and they add their respective flavors and textures to your cookie. If you don't see your favorite candy selection in the baking aisle, veer a bit off course into the candy aisle.

Reese's Pieces are bite-sized candies that can easily be added to your cookie mixture for a crunchy texture and sweeter, peanut butter flavor. Candy that is not bite-sized can easily be made that way. A Butterfinger, for instance, can be blitzed slightly in a small food processor or simply put in a small plastic storage bag and beaten with a rolling pin. Adding those pieces will add a toffee and chocolate flavor and a signature Butterfinger crunch. 

Make your own chocolate nibs by breaking up your favorite chocolate bar. A dark chocolate sea salt bar will add a chunky look, gooey bits of rich chocolate, and a hint of salt that will elevate all flavors. Milk chocolate and caramel bars add the taste of a chocolate chip cookie with the silky taste and texture of caramel. You get the picture. So, be creative.

This time of year will not leave you lacking in peppermint. And if it is one of your flavors of choice, put it in your cookies. You can simply add peppermint flavor by putting a ¼ teaspoon of peppermint extract into the wet ingredients of your dough. A little of this extract goes a long way, so use it sparingly to create a smooth taste of mint in your cookie.

If you want to amp up the visual and texture of your peppermint cookies, add crushed-up peppermint. Just like candy pieces, it's easy to make candy canes or peppermints bite-sized. Add it into the dough at the end, and it will bake up nicely, leaving visible red and white chunks. Throw in some white or milk chocolate chips to add a rich, creamy flavor, an enhanced visual, and an additional textural element.

White, dark, and milk chocolate candy melts are common in most grocery stores. The microwaveable ones are really easy to work with. And dipping your finished cookies in chocolate is a simple way to change and elevate the flavor, texture, and style without a lot of effort. In two steps, a simple sugar cookie can be elevated to a black and white cookie by dipping the cookies one side at a time. This will give a great, soft, thick texture and two creamy chocolate flavors. 

You can also get a wide variety of colored candy melts at specialty stores. While these are generally vanilla-flavored, they can add a festive look to your cookies. And the coating creates a lovely, soft texture that will give your sugar cookie a sophisticated look and melt-in-the-mouth feel. Add more texture and flavor by dipping one side of your cookie in melts or chocolate and adding slivers of savory nut pieces, buttery toffee, peppermint, or snappy crushed candy before it hardens.

Hershey's Kisses (and hugs) come in a variety of flavors. There is milk chocolate, white chocolate swirled, dark, hot cocoa, candy cane, mint truffle, cherry cordial, cookies 'n' crème, strawberry ice cream cone, and more. And they may be the easiest way to add those flavors to your cookies.

All you have to do is mix and bake your sugar cookies and simply press the Kiss candy of your choice on top of the cookie when it comes out of the oven. The chocolate will melt slightly from the heat of the fresh-baked cookie, allowing it to stick, but it will still retain the classic shape. This will leave you with a festive-looking crowned cookie that has a core of creamy chocolate flavor (and more, depending on which one you choose). It really doesn't get much easier than that.