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!!
These are absolutely delicious and such a crowd pleaser!
In terms of the q’s about freezability – I froze my iced cookies (once they’d set) in layers (with baking paper in-between them) in an airtight container. I put a layer of foil over the very top to ‘tuck them in’ before putting the lid on. They froze beautifully and when needed, defrosted quickly on the kitchen bench within a few hours. Quality was great 👍🍪🩷
I loved making these cookies! So easy to make. I don’t know where I went wrong but my cookies expanded in the oven. I suspect because it was a really hot day when I was making them, making it hard to roll the dough thin enough but they went down a treat! Thanks Nagi!
This is probably one of the easiest Xmas cookies recipes I have ever used. Easy to handle and delicious. I didn’t decorate them but used an embossed rolling pin and round cookie cutter which worked perfectly. Thanks Nagi
I hate making sugar cookies and this was the easiest recipe to follow! I love that you don’t have to refrigerate the dough and when using cookies cutters the cookies came out sharp!
These turned out amazing and tasty!
Perfect texture and best dough to get the perfect thickness! Will be using this recipe often!
Hi can this dough be frozen for later use? as I plan on baking a large batch. and if so how would i go about baking them? Thank you
Is there a way to substitute the egg? Has anyone tried it?
I guess swapping butter with a dairy free option will work too?
Thanks
By far the best Christmas cookie recipe I’ve ever tried!
I am not a baker. Sugar cookies are not my go to. I wanted to make decorated cookies to impress my family for Thanksgiving. I did a practice run this weekend. Making the dough was easy and straightforward. The cookies were a big hit. I knew your recipe would blow it out of the park. I love Dozer and I am a big fan! I have both of your cookbooks. 🦃
can you make one for kids to independently make? maybe without the beater
My mixer broke, and I was able to make these cookies with just a wooden spoon. You want the butter to be quite soft (otherwise the kids will struggle to squish it with the spoon) but not melted (or cookies will spread)
I think with 225g unsalted butter it’s oozing with oil!…too much to handle! or maybe coz it’s getting hotter in the kitchen coz it’s summer. Do you think I should add more flour? I actually ended up refrigerating the dough!
The best cookies ever sooo yumm 10/10
Hi Nagi,
I’m in a Cafe and we want to sell these for the Xmas season.
Can you PLEASE tell me whether these biscuits can be frozen WITH the icing?!
I really need an answer!
Thank you! Xxx
Thank you for this terrific recipe! My son and his dad are very picky, and these had everyone happy. We left them uniced, because neither of my boys like icing, and they came out terrific and sweet enough without icing.
This one is getting saved for sure!
Can I make these without egg? Allergies 🤦♀️
Truly delicious! Made these for a baby shower and everyone asked for the recipe
I loved these cookies I’m only 12 and it was such a simple recipe we all while them while setting up the Christmas tree and listing to Christmas carols I would 100%recommend these I love you so much as a cook keep making new recipes for me to try
I made these today and they were delicious! But my dough was super crumbly, I added a tiny bit of water to help make it more malleable but still very tricky to work with. Any tips? I double checked the recipe but maybe the egg wasn’t big enough or I slightly under measured the butter? Is water ok to add?
Just want to say that these are the BEST cookies! My family has to eat gluten free, so we swap regular flour for GF flour, and they are perfect! Thank you for the recipe!
thank you for this comment, I have a recently diagnosed coeliac 5yo and he missed out on our christmas tradition of baking cookies last year. Do you do a 1 for 1 swap or do you need more/less GF flour?
Thank you Brelin, came to look for this answer. Not long found out my son is ceiliac and we love making biscuits for Santa at Christmas time.
I have family members I enjoy making gluten free recipes for. In Canada, I used Real Canadian Superstore President’s Choice (PC) brand of GF 1-to-1 flour and they were very yummy. Our family had fun icing Hallowe’en themed cookies recently. We plan to do them for Christmas next. 🙂 I thought this might help Canadian celiac home chefs to know that the Cdn. PC brand was very successful in this recipe!
Amazing. I did these for my eisteddfod competition, and it turned out so good. I also used the matching icing with it!
Ok to make these with a stand mixer yeah?