I'm just trying to understand how this recipe could ever work the way it was listed.

This is the 2nd time this has happened. This recipe was posted on Taste of Home and has many good ratings. I've seen similar sugar cookie recipes with similar ratios of eggs and butter to flour.
When I made this recipe, in order to be a rollable, dough I needed to add 3 additional cups of flour. Using only the 31/2 cups listed below, - the dough was no where  rollable - it was more like a batter than a dough. I followed the recipe exactly.
I just don't know how the author or anybody else could produce a dough out of this. Any ideas?

Thanks for any ideas.

1 cup butter, softened
1-1/2 cups Granulated Sugar
3 eggs
1 cup (8 ounces) sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda

An Idea for you is to remove some of the water out of your sour cream. I live in the South but I'm from Chicago. My sour cream here is very loose. In Chicago it is all but slicable it is so thick--it has less water.

If you place your sour cream in a strainer (it would of course go right through if you're not careful) but just set it in there so the water can run out. Will make a world of difference.

Take Care!

This is not a recipe for rolled cookies.  Not even if you chill for a week first.

I use almost this exact recipe for cookies that are rolled by hand into balls, rolled into sugar, and pressed flat onto cookie sheets.  They are delicious tender soft cookies that keep well.

The key word is "heavily" floured and they mean HEAVILY...enough to add another cup of flour to the batch.  

That makes for pretty bad cookies. IMHO.

If you want to bake them the other way, my recipe also calls for 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg to be added with the vanilla.

AThat is the same recipe from Karenscookies.net. she uses them as cut outs. I just made this but haven't rolled them out yet as they still chilling.

I was just going to ask if the OP is making them and chilling them. There are all kinds of difficult-to-work-with dough. It's hard, but it's still possible to roll them out. Among my hardest to work with are rugelach dough and sablés.

I make these sablés with caramel glazing in a mixer, and even after chilling the dough I have to be careful with it. I have to roll between two sheets of parchment paper.

http://www.cherrapeno.com/2010/03/sables-with-caramel-glaze.html

I might try your sugar cookie recipe! Galliesway, let me know how it goes?

I suppose there is always the issue of how much flour one gets into a measuring cup using different methods.

However, when I go looking for a reliable cookie recipe, I go to allrecipes.com 

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sour-Cream-Cut-Out-Cookies/Detail.aspx?prop24=RD_RelatedRecipes

where you will see that for rolled cookies, there is much less sour cream and egg for the same amount of flour.

Thank you for the recipe, BakingIrene. I'll check them out later. I weigh all my ingredients in grams, and put recipes in a spreadsheet to compare once they're in grams, so I'll check this one too!  Thanks again.

imagenthatnj~ they taste fantastic, rolled out not too bad... chill....chill and flour in between. I am not a cookie baker by any means. Trying my hand at and in it for the memories with my kiddo

Thank you for reporting back! I love baking cookies and once I get them right, I translate the recipe to Spanish, send to my sister in South America, who sells packages of cookies to a bakery. Thanks again!

Took me forever to find the time to actually make them. The blizzard we got yesterday was the solution.  I love CC for wealth of info & sharing tips & recipes!