When the holiday season rolls around, one of things to look forward to the most is making cookies. Whether you’re making cookies with the kids to leave out for Santa, or packing cookie tins to gift to friends, we’ve got a wonderful list of some of the best Christmas Cookie Recipes. We’ve thrown in some traditional favorites, some super festive decorative cookies, and of course a few basic sugar cookies. You might want to try several and organize your own cookie exchange! But first here’s all the basics about Christmas Cookies.
Decorating Christmas Cookies Ideas
Christmas is a time when family and cultural traditions are at a high. For many families, making Christmas cookies together is an annual event, and here in the US, sugar cookies are being made and decorated in kitchens across the country. Some people make the sugar cookie dough from scratch, some purchase pre-made dough – whatever your preference, they are still fun to make with your family. Here are some great decorating tips to tackle your Christmas sugar cookies.
Frosting/Icing
- Buttercream Frosting: Buttercream, whether homemade or store bought, does not harden. It remains soft to the touch. It can easily be altered with food coloring and flavor extracts, and the soft frosting allows for sprinkles and other decorations to be easily applied. You can add it to piping bags to create your own handmade designs as well.
- Royal Icing: This is a popular icing for sugar cookies. Often used for making different colors of icing, it is easily altered with food coloring. Royal icing will dry hard, but can take up to 8 hours to fully harden. Great for adding to piping bags and creating designs. Not as effective for applying sprinkles and decorations.
- Fondant: Fondant is an edible dough that can be rolled out and cut and applied to the top of the cookie. You can even cut out shapes or mold your own designs. If you choose to apply a single flat layer to the top of the cookie, you can use the surface to paint on designs with edible paint. Fondant can be altered with food coloring, and can be purchased premade if you prefer.
- Store-Bought Tub Frosting: You can get it in a variety of flavors and colors. Similar to buttercream, it generally will remain soft but creates a good surface to apply sprinkles and décor. Light colored tub frosting can be altered with food coloring. You can add milk or water to thin it out if necessary, and added to piping bags to make designs.
- Pouches & Tubes: These store-bought frostings and icings can be purchased in a variety of colors and consistencies, including gels. They usually do not harden, and remain soft like buttercream. Layers of thicker tubed frosting can be applied for adding decorations, while gels and thinner tubes can be used for creating writing and designs.
- Cookie Icing: Brands like Wilton have prepackaged cookie icing. It will set (but not completely harden) over time, and create a smooth finish. These are great quick alternatives and are perfect for making handmade designs and applying small sprinkles, glitters, and other light decorations.
Best Things To Use To Decorate Christmas Cookies
Here are some fun and creative ways to decorate Christmas cookies:
- Sprinkles/Nonpareils: Round ball shapes
- Dragees: Larger ball-shaped sprinkles, note that some are not edible
- Sugar Pearls: Larger ball-shaped sprinkles, but smaller than dragees
- Jimmies: Long sprinkles
- Quins: Sequins or confetti, flat; can often be found in other shapes like Christmas trees, hearts, and stars
- Sanding Sugar: Dust or glitter, or tiny pieces of colored sugar
- Sparkling Sugar: Larger grained coarse sugar, sparkles like glitter
- Edible food colors and paints: Paint designs or use metallic paint to highlight the cookies
- Edible Glitter: very fine grained sugar dust
- Small candies: Sixlets, Red Hots and M&Ms
- Crushed Candy Canes or Peppermint
- Stained Glass: Crushed hard candies that create a stained glass effect when baked in the center of a cookie
- Marbled Cookies: Different colored cookie doughs that are swirled together.
Quick tip: Prepare the cookie dough in advance of the holidays, shape it into balls, and freeze them for later use, bake when needed. Most cookie doughs freeze well for up to 3 months!
Christmas Cookie Recipes
Try these delicious Christmas Cookie Recipes to add fun and festive decorative flair and a variety of all your favorite flavors. Whether you are filling your cookie tray at home, participating in a cookie exchange, or filling holiday tins to gift to friends, these Christmas Cookies are a hit!
Meringue Christmas Trees
These little Meringue Christmas Tree cookies are adorable, are super easy to make, and will look so festive on your holiday table.
How To Make Sugar Cookies
This step-by-step guide is great for bakers looking for a classic sugar cookie recipe. It's the perfect base for all the holiday cookies you want to decorate.
Easy Cranberry Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
These cookies and the addition of fresh cranberries and drizzled chocolate makes them perfect for a Christmas cookie tray.
Almond Crescent Cookies Recipe
This Almond Crescent Cookies recipe is light, crumbly, not too sweet and perfect for coffee or Christmas.
Easy Christmas Cookies with Holiday Pretzels
These easy Christmas Cookies are salty-sweet addictive and look so pretty on a Christmas tray. You can make a lot at one time so you’ll have more time for wrapping those gifts!
Dark Chocolate Swirl Meringue
These dark chocolate meringue cookies are a great addition to the Christmas Cookie Exchange! These decadent meringues are perfectly drizzled with dark chocolate.
Dark Chocolate Shortbread Cookies With Pistachios (With Video Tutorial!)
These dark chocolate shortbread cookies with pistachios are near-perfect, firm but still soft in the center, and take only six ingredients to make!
Jam-Filled Sandwich Cookies - The Blonde Chef
These jam filled window cookies are perfect to make during the holiday season and have the eye-catching wow factor you want when you're putting your desserts out for guests, or making a tin of treats to gift to friends.
Italian Christmas Cookies
These easy-to-make Italian Christmas Cookies are delicious cake-like cookies with a hint of anise and a sweet sugar glaze.
Pistachio Wreath Cookies
A play on a classic linzer cookie, these Pistachio Wreath Cookies are the perfect treat to make for your Christmas cookie plate!
Oatmeal Pecan Cookies
These cookies have crispy and crunchy sugary edges, a soft slightly underbaked center, plenty of melted chocolate throughout, and overall, plenty of chewiness. You'll be obsessed!
Old-Fashioned Iced Oatmeal Cookies
There's a bit of nostalgia in these old fashioned iced oatmeal cookies. Plus, they are just the right amount of sweet with hints of cinnamon and nutmeg, with a soft center and chewy edges.
Lemon Cranberry Cookies
These mini, bite-sized Lemon Cranberry Cookies are prepared with lightly sweetened vanilla cookie dough and topped with a sugary, sweet glaze.
Secret Ingredient Chocolate Chip Cookies
Secret ingredient chocolate chip cookies are an elevated version of the cookies you know and love. Chocolate and spice will have your taste buds singing.
BEST Soft Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
These Easy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies are the perfect blend of peanut butter and chocolate! They’re soft and chewy and everyone loves them.
Christmas Pinwheels
These fun and festive Christmas Pinwheel Cookies are the perfect holiday treat with swirled layers of sugar cookie dough.
Snowball Cookies
These melt-in-your-mouth Italian cookies are perfect paired with hot chocolate, coffee, tea or eggnog and are a Christmas classic that must be included at least once over the holiday season.
Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe
These ULTRA-easy peanut butter cookies are full of peanut butter flavor with the perfect balance of salty and sweet with a wonderfully soft, melt in your mouth texture.
Easy Candy Cane Cookies Recipe for Christmas!
This Candy Cane Cookies are such a treat made with a basic cookie dough flavored with peppermint, then colored red and white, and twisted into a candy cane!
Festive Candy Cane Sugar Cookies - Perfect for Christmas!
These are fun and festive sugar cookies with crushed candy canes added to the dough and topped with a luscious buttercream frosting!
Hot Chocolate Cookies
These Hot Chocolate Cookies are soft and fudgy and topped with a gooey marshmallow.
Classic Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies
This classic peanut butter cookie with a kiss is essential to every Christmas cookie tray! And they are so easy to make.
Chocolate Blossom Cookies
Here's a delicious twist on the kiss cookies for chocolate lovers! And they are so pretty with the chocolate crinkle cookie as the base.
Spritz Cookies Recipe
This spritz cookie recipe is for buttery and sweet-pressed cookies. They are festive and fun to make, and are a stunning addition to your holiday spread.
Rugelach Cookies with Cream Cheese Dough
These tasty pastry-like rugelach cookies are a Jewish tradition that are perfect to serve for Christmas or Hanukkah.
British Brandy Snaps
This British treat is traditionally served at Christmas. The crispy lace is rolled and filled with a sweet brandy whipped cream.
Dipped Oreo Cookies for Christmas
These Oreo cookies are dipped in candy melts and festively decorated.
Gingerbread Cookies Recipe
This gingerbread cookie recipe creates soft and chewy gingerbread men that can be festively decorated on your Christmas cookie tray.
Thumbprint Cookies
Thumbprint cookies are pretty holiday cookies that have a buttery base with a tasty dollop of jam in the center. Use for favorite jams and create colorful and festiva cookie combinations.
Hot Chocolate Peppermint Thumbprint Cookies
These thumbprint cookies have a sweet and gooey ganache in the center and are topped with crunchy bits of peppermint.
Festive Danish Butter Cookies
You can't forget to add this classic holiday cookie to your collection. These light and simple butter cookies melt in your mouth with just a hint of vanilla.
Christmas Cookies {easy, delicious, make ahead}
These might be one of your favorite Christmas cookies, loaded with M&Ms and sprinkles, they are soft, chewy, and perfectly festive.
Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies
Molasses cookies are a holiday must-have, and these ginger molasses cookies are super soft, chewy, and delightfully delicious.
White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies - The Best You've Ever Had
These cookies have crispy edges and soft, chewy centers, and are loaded with macadamias and white chocolate chunks!
Authentic German Lebkuchen
Lebkuchen is a traditional German Christmas treat. Loaded with nuts and candied orange and lemon peels and covered with a tasty glaze, these are a unique and delicious cookie to add to your cookie tray.
Easy Vanilla Bean Christmas Lights Cookies.
These are such pretty Christmas cookies! They will add that extra wow factor to your holiday cookie spread and are perfect for a holiday party.
Ugly Christmas Sweater Cookies (best sugar cookie recipe)
Ugly sweater meets Christmas cookie with these creative designs.
No-Bake Christmas Tree Cookies
No-Bake Christmas Tree Cookies are a fun and easy Christmas treat to serve up during the holidays.
Cake Mix Christmas Cookies
Cake mix cookies are a quick and easy way to make cookies without starting from scratch.
Eggnog Cookies with Eggnog Frosting
Give your classic snickerdoodle cookies a holiday boost with the addition of eggnog, including a delicious eggnog frosting!
Stained Glass Cookies - Cooking Classy
These crisp, buttery cookies are eye catching and delicious! Cut them into festive shapes and fill the centers with hard candies for a beautiful addition to your Christmas Cookie tin.
Melted Snowman Cookies
Maybe one of the cutest Christmas cookies you can make, these melted snowman cookies are peanut putter on the bottom and topped with melted white chocolate and a peanut butter cup.
Peppermint Bark Recipe
Not quite a cookie, but close enough! This peppermint bark is a holiday must and looks beautiful with the other festive Christmas Cookies.
Marzipan Chocolates
These marzipan chocolates are not exactly cookies, but they have such a pretty sheen and are easily customizable to fit into your holiday cookie spread.
Traditional Christmas Cookies From Around The World
- Almond Ginger Cookies (China)
- Basler Brunsli (Switzerland)
- Brigadeiro Cookies (Brazil)
- Brunkager (Denmark)
- Canadian Cherry Balls (Canada)
- Cinnamon Ghoribas (South Africa)
- Cucidati Fig Cookies (Italy)
- Fattigmann/Poor man’s cookie (Norway)
- Khrustyky (Ukraine)
- Kolachy (Slovenia)
- Holiday Lebkuchen or German Gingerbread Cookies (Germany)
- Linzer Cookies (Austria)
- Macrons (France)
- Mantecaditos de Guayaba (Puerto Rico)
- Melomakarona or Christmas Honey Cookies (Greece/Cyprus)
- Mexican Wedding Cakes (Mexico)
- Mincemeat Palmier (Great Britain)
- Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas Cookies/German Anabaptist
- Pebber Nodder or Danish Christmas Cookies (Denmark)
- Pepparkakor or Swedish Ginger Cookies (Sweden)
- Pinwheels (Finland)
- Pizelle (Italy)
- Polvorones Shortbread-like Cookies (Spain/Latin America)
- Sables or French Christmas Cookies (France)
- Sandbakkelse (Norway)
- Šape Bear Paw Cookies (Croatia)
- Shortbread (Scotland)
- Spritzgeback (Germany)
- Sweet Potato Spice Cookies (Malawi)
- Russian Tea Cakes (Russia)
- Vanillekipferl (Austria)
- Zimtsterne (Switzerland)
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