These soft and chewy Christmas Cookies are a holiday favorite with their festive sprinkle topping and easy-to-make frosting that hardens for stacking and sharing! I'm also listing dozens more of my most requested and well-loved Christmas cookie recipes!
More Christmas and Holiday Collections: What To Serve With Prime Rib, Leftover Prime Rib Recipes, Leftover Turkey Recipes
One of the most delicious Christmas traditions around has got to be all of the festive cookies! These bright and cheery frosted Christmas cookies simply beg to be eaten and are a long-standing family favorite!
At my home, and I know many others are this way too, the holiday baking begins well before the big day arrives. Cookies are rolled, baked, decorated, and saved in a number of ways to share with family and friends.
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In contrast to all of the more detailed cookies that I enjoy baking, my Christmas cookies recipe here is a quick and easy version. Plus, they do get those ooh's and ahh's of visual appreciation which is always so satisfying!
My simple sugar cookies are made drop cookie style, rather than rolled, then topped with frosting and a medley of decorative sprinkles to make my desired blend. I had specifics that included gold for this year, but you can use any color combination that you like best!
20 Fantastic Christmas Cookies for Holiday Baking
Here is a wide variety of wonderful cookies to bake for Christmas, from traditional to fun and colorful!
Sugar Cookies
Vintage Betty Crocker Rolled Sugar Cookies
Eggnog Sugar Cookies with Nutmeg Frosting
Shortbread Cookies
Drop Cookies
Oatmeal Molasses Raisin Cookies (WWII Cookies)
Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies
No-Bake Cookies
Chocolate Peppermint No-Bake Cookies
Chocolate Oatmeal No Bake Cookies (without peanut butter)
Chocolate Peanut Butter No Bake Cookies
Peanut Butter Oatmeal No Bake Cookies
Meringue Cookies
Christmas Cake Batter Meringues
Christmas Eggnog Meringue Cookies
Plus Some Christmas Candy Favorites!
📋 Recipe
Christmas Cookies
Ingredients
Christmas Cookies {Sugar Cookie Recipe}
- 1 cup butter (softened - at room temperature)
- 1 cup confectioners sugar
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
Sugar Cookie Frosting
- 1 sugar cookie frosting (see recipe)
- sprinkles (optional - holiday colors)
Instructions
Christmas Cookies {Sugar Cookie Instructions}
- In a large mixing bowl add the softened butter, confectioners' sugar, and granulated sugar.
- Cream together the butter, confectioners' sugar, and sugar until just combined.
- Add the egg, vanilla extract, baking soda, cream of tartar, and 1 tablespoon of flour.
- Combine the ingredients until smooth.
- Add the flour to the wet ingredients.
- Mix the flour until it is just incorporated into the cookie dough.
- Cover your bowl with plastic cling film and chill the Christmas sugar cookie dough in the refrigerator for one hour.
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Portion the cookie dough and roll into 1-inch dough balls. Place the dough onto your prepared baking sheets with 2 inches of spacing between each cookie. *For best results, return your readied cookie dough and the baking sheet to your refrigerator to chill between baking batches of cookies.
- bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 8-10 minutes, or until puffy and lightly golden on the cookie edges.
- Remove from the oven and allow the cookies to cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet before transferring cookies to a wire cooling rack to cool completely (before frosting). *For best results, allow your baking sheets to cool completely before readying the next batch of cookie dough.
Sugar Cookie Frosting & Holiday Sprinkles
- Combine your holiday sprinkles in a small bowl to make your desired color mix. I'm using Wilton brand holiday jimmies, holiday nonpareils, and a gold mix pictured here.
- Mix the frosting according to the instructions on the recipe here. I used butter flavored Crisco with lemon extract, for super white frosting use standard vegetable shortening (unflavored). *You can also use a buttercream frosting for the cookies.
- You can spread the frosting onto the cookies, or pipe the frosting. Apply sprinkles by dropping them onto each cookie and pressing the sprinkles into the frosting. *Leave cookies on a wire cooling rack above a rimmed baking sheet to catch the extra sprinkles.You can also dip the frosted cookies directly into your sprinkle mix, and press down gently to set the sprinkles. The image below shows the piped frosting with applied sprinkles on the left, and the spatula-frosted cookie that was dipped into the sprinkles mix on the right.
Nutrition
Angela is an at home chef that developed a passion for all things cooking and baking at a young age in her Grandma's kitchen. After many years in the food service industry, she now enjoys sharing all of her family favorite recipes and creating tasty dinner and amazing dessert recipes here at Bake It With Love!
Andrea says
I was surfing through all of your cookie recipes and ran into this gem. The first thing I thought was how much my girls will love having fun with the sprinkles. We'll be using these for many holidays!