Take a break from the Christmas madness to make Christmas Cookies! These sugar cookies are classic vanilla biscuits that are made for cutting out shapes because they hold their shape perfectly when baked.
NO CHILL time, make them soft OR crispy. Ice them my EASY way, dip in chocolate, dust with icing sugar or serve them plain!
Christmas Cookies
What I call “Christmas Cookies” are simply vanilla biscuits cut out in Christmas shapes and iced with colourful festive frosting. They taste like shortbread cookies, but not quite as buttery or crumbly. They are as classic as vanilla biscuits can be.
This particular biscuit recipe is made for cutting out shapes – in this case, Christmas shapes. Most cookies spread snd puff up so they bear little resemblance to the shape you expected!
But these hold their shape perfectly – as you can see by the sharp ridges and corners in the photo below.
What you need for Christmas Cookies
The nice thing about these Christmas Cookies is that they’re made with pantry staples – so there’s no need to add to your ever growing Christmas grocery shopping list!!!
How to make Christmas Cookies
Unlike most cookie doughs suitable for cutting out shape, there’s no chill time required for this recipe. Ain’t nobody got time for chilling during Christmas madness – right??!
Bonus: the dough is easy to handle and can be scrunched up and rolled up again over and over until you’ve used up every scrap.
Because these are sweet vanilla biscuits, they are flavoured enough and sweet enough to serve plain. But if you are inclined to ice them, pop over to my Icing for Christmas Cookies (PS I also share my quick ‘n easy way to ice them!)
So. Many. Cookies.
A sight that will catapult anyone into serious Christmas spirit!!
Make these for Santa, your family, or (if you’re really feeling the holiday spirit) maybe even to gift to someone.
And don’t worry. This is a big batch recipe. Nibble away, no one will miss one or two or five!! 😉 – Nagi x
Watch how to make it
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Christmas Cookies (Vanilla Biscuits / Sugar Cookies)
Ingredients
- 225g / 1 cup unsalted butter , softened (or use salted, skip salt)
- 1 cup caster/superfine sugar (granulated/ordinary white sugar ok too)
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 large egg (55-60g / 1.9-2oz)
- 3 cups flour , plain / all purpose
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 tsp salt
Icing for Sugar Cookies
Instructions
- Preheat Oven to 180°C / 350°F (160°C fan). Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Beat butter and sugar in a large bowl until creamy (1 minute on speed 5)
- Add egg and vanilla, beat until completely combined.
- Add flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Start mixing slowly, then beat until the flour is incorporated – it will be clumpy.
- Dust work surface with flour, scrape dough out of bowl. Pat together then cut in half, then shape into 2 discs.
- Roll out to 0.3cm / 1/8" (for thinner, crispier cookies) or 0.6cm / 1/4" (for thicker, softer cookies), sprinkling with flour under and over the dough so it doesn't stick.
- Use cookie cutters to press out shapes and use a knife or spatula to transfer shapes to prepared baking sheets. (Keep dough that doesn’t fit in the oven in the fridge).
- Bake for 10 minutes, swapping trays halfway (Note 2), until the surface is pale golden and the edges are just beginning to turn light golden.
- Allow cookies to cool completely on trays (they will finish cooking on the trays).
Decorating options:
- Icing – see Icing for Christmas Cookies recipe.
- Melt chocolate then dip the surface into chocolate.
- Dot with icing sugar and decorated with silver balls
- Dust with icing sugar
- Serve plain! They are sweet vanilla biscuits so they are wonderful eaten just as they are!
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Originally published 2019. Reviewed and refreshed as needed every year or so. No change to recipe, it’s a classic!
Life of Dozer
When Dozer got his very own personalised Christmas cookie!!
Great simple recipe for biscuits to decorate. I add lemon and ime rind. Also if you roll them out between two pieces of baking paper then its quick and you dont dry the mixture out so much and get flour everyhwhere ( but maybe thats just me 😉
Lovely biscuits, as all your recipes. They are all fantastic.
Lots of love from Spain.
I haven’t made sugar cookies in years because I just couldn’t get them right until now. These are so good and fairly easy. Haven’t iced them yet, but assume that should be as easy and good as the cookies!
I made these yesterday with my son. They were delicious. Tasted just like Danish butter cookies. I didn’t even need to put the icing. They were great as is. I used granulated sugar and I even used 3/4 cups and they were still sweet and crumbly and just delicious.
I must have done something wrong my dough was a bit sticky l think l put a little bit extra butter in anyway lve got half the dough left in the fridge covered is there anything l can do to fix this ?
You need to add more flour like that wouldn’t be so sticky.
Mine turned out sticky too. Not dough like. I kept adding more flour until it resembled more like the video. I think it was about 4 tbsp more of flour.
Thanks for this wonderful recipe. We’re a young family with two toddlers trying to find Christmas Staples for us. I think, I found the ones for cutting.
Although I will try to reduce the amount of sugar, because my little helpers like to decorate with sprinkles. I didn’t have corn syrup for the icing, since we live in Germany, so I used some maple syrup instead and put some vanilla as well in the icing.
In Germany we usually only use lemon juice and powdered sugar for the icing and I’m not a fan of the lemony taste in my Christmas cookies, this is far better.
Again thank you for sharing
Just wondering if the cookies can be baked and frozen? Then iced at a later date once defrosted? I love this recipe and have made it many times.. now I’m brave enough to gift a batch of these to people for Christmas but cannot do them all at once 😅
I came here wondering this same thing!!! Did you get an answer??
Not yet and I haven’t had the chance to try it! Hopefully we’ll find out soon 🙂
I have frozen these both before and after icing them and they have been perfect once defrosted at room temp
Is this recipe using the stove ovens or conventional small ovens?
I’ve made this three times now and they’re perfect every time. No changes needed! We are obsessed with this recipe. Thank you, Nagi!
Do you think that I could use coconut oil instead of butter?
Hi can the dough be frozen for a few weeks
what if you dont have eggs
Hey can you freeze these?
Is the dough fit to be frozen until use?
Just checking for coverage for the Christmas
For how long will the biscuits stay fresh?
lovely cookies
The most wonderful Christmas Cookies!!! Thank you!!!
I added fresh strawberries, raspberries and blackberries to them and they were AMAZING
i belive you are a wasteman
and shuold stop dealing on my
turf
Hi Nagi, its you again…and its me again your ultimate fan in cooking. Thank you for this another recipes again.
Amazing recipe! This time I subbed in a bit of almond meal and lemon zest and it came out fantastic. Thank you!
I have tried so many sugar cookie recipes for decorating and always been disappointed I couldn’t get them neat and flat.
These were amazing! Made a huge batch for a jubilee street party this weekend and am so happy with how they turned out! Will definitely be doing again.