By Texas Homesteader ~ 

Vanilla wafers. You know the ones, those small golden cookies that everyone uses when they make banana pudding.

This vanilla wafer cookie recipe is simple and the cookies bake up fast. They’re lightly crisp and slightly chewy, and very buttery!

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Vanilla wafers are delicious, but other than when eating banana pudding I’d never really given them much thought.

But I wondered… how hard could they really be to bake up fresh instead of buying a box at the store?

As it turns out, not hard at all!

Rethinking Buying Vanilla Wafers

On top of keeping our Homestead on a pretty tight budget, I’m an eco-girl. I try to reduce trash coming into our home whenever possible. PREcycling, bebe!

I want vanilla wafer cookies that would are easy and delicious enough to add to this website. (which I admit, I fully use as my own online cookbook, y’all!)

You can see all our favorite desserts by clicking on the button below:

But for now, back to those cookies.

A NON-Finicky Vanilla Wafer Recipe

Some vanilla wafer recipes seem a little, I dunno, fussy? Separated egg whites? Powdered sugar? Piping bags?

Oh no, that’s not the way I roll, y’all. I want something that tastes delicious but is still EASY in the kitchen. You too? Read on, dear friends.

This is a basic vanilla wafer cookie recipe with simple ingredients. 

Simple Vanilla Wafer Cookie Ingredients

The ingredients for these vanilla wafer cookies are straightforward:

• • • Softened butter,

    • All purpose flour,

    • Granulated sugar,

    • One egg,

    • Baking powder,

    • Vanilla extract.

How To Make Vanilla Wafer Cookie Batter

Making these homemade vanilla wafer cookies is easy:

Cream softened butter and sugar

Add vanilla extract and 1 egg, blending again.

In a separate bowl mix flour, baking powder and salt.

Lightly fold the two mixtures together.

I folded it all together just until it was blended. In mere minutes it was time to make cookies!

Homemade Vanilla Wafer Cookie Characteristics

These vanilla wafers baked up differently than the high-dome & harder traditional vanilla wafers.

These homemade vanilla wafers were:

Lightly crisp

Buttery

Larger

Sweet chewy texture

RancherMan was fond of the texture difference between these and the harder traditional vanilla wafers.

And the larger cookie worked in my favor for my banana pudding dessert, as well as having some standard-sized cookies for snacking later.

I’m always pleased with these vanilla wafer cookies. They’re simple, fast to bake and delicious. That’s why they’re included here in what I lovingly refer to as my

Texas Homesteader ‘online cookbook’.

Can You Use A Cookie Scoop For Vanilla Wafer Cookies?

You can use a measuring spoon to measure the cookie dough. But a *Cookie Scoop is the easiest way to measure. 

I used the smallest cookie scoop I had, I believe it measured about a tablespoon of batter for each cookie. The resulting cookies were larger than the vanilla wafers I’d always purchased in the store – about 2” across. 

You want to try to get them about 2” apart from each other because they will spread as they bake. It took me two baking sheets to hold all the cookies.

I suppose you could use a teaspoon to measure out an even smaller amount of cookie dough for each cookie instead of my tablespoon-sized scoop if desired.

How Many Vanilla Wafer Cookies In The Recipe?

Using my approximately tablespoon-sized scoop, this recipe made 36 cookies.

I’ll use some for my banana pudding and some will be crushed to sprinkle on top – just for looks. The rest will go for cookie treats for RancherMan & myself.

Using Larger Vanilla Wafer Cookies

As it turned out these larger cookies fit perfectly on the bottom of my wide-mouth half-pint jelly canning jar which I was using as dessert serving bowls.

When I served my Homemade Banana Pudding I put a cookie on bottom, layered on sliced bananas, then added pudding to the top. I repeated that layer and then tilted a homemade vanilla wafer cookie on the edge.

Mama always says “presentation is half the meal”. And you know mama’s always right!

Did you make these Vanilla Wafer Cookies? Please rate the recipe in your comment below!

5 from 1 vote

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Simple Vanilla Wafer Cookies

You can make the cookies bigger if you'd like, they just won't have as crispy of an outside. We like to add a slice of banana between two cookies, dip them in chocolate, and then freeze them 

Course Cookies

Cuisine American

Keyword butter, cookies, vanilla, wafer

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes

Servings 36 cookies

Author www.TexasHomesteader.com

Ingredients

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Butter, softened (1 stick, or 4 oz)
• 1 cup Granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 Tblsp Vanilla extract
• 1 ⅓ Cups All-purpose flour
• ¾ tsp Baking powder
• ¼ tsp Salt

Instructions

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

2. In a large bowl, cream together the 1/2 cup room-temperature butter and 1 cup sugar until light and fluffy; add 1 egg and 1 tablespoon vanilla extract, mixing thoroughly.

3. In a separate bowl, combine 1 ⅓ cups flour, ¾ teaspoon baking powder, and ¼ teaspoon salt. Then fold the flour mixture into the butter mixture, just until blended

4. Use a small cookie scoop or drop cookies approximately 1 tablespoon at a time about 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets. (I needed two baking sheets for this recipe!)

5. Bake in the preheated oven until edges of cookies are golden brown, 13 to 15 minutes. Cool cookies on wire racks.

Recipe Notes

NOTE: Using my 1 Tablespoon cookie scoop netted 36 approximately 2" cookies from this recipe. You can use a smaller 1 teaspoon cookie scoop to get more numerous yet smaller vanilla wafer cookies.

~TxH~

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