If you dream of making iced sugar cookies that look as beautiful as those you find in bakeries, but your homemade batches turn out misshapen and hard to frost smoothly, don't despair. It's likely that you just have to tweak your recipe a bit to ensure success, and adding this secret ingredient may be the easiest way to do so.

In her recipe for buttery sugar cookies, recipe developer Jennine Bryant reveals that her secret weapon is a 1/3 cup of cornstarch added to the dough. She notes that this addition gives the cookies more structure and keeps them from spreading out too much while baking, so that they turn out uniform and ready for icing.

Bob's Red Mill also notes that adding cornstarch to baked goods gives them a more tender, crumbly texture, and Preppy Kitchen concurs that adding the starch to your sugar cookies gives you "laser-sharp edges" for a beautiful final result. Cornstarch even makes your dough less sticky and easier to knead and cut out.