Christmas Cookie
101 recipes found
Chocolate Babka Rugelach
These festive, fudgy confections are a mash-up of two traditional Jewish favorites: rugelach and chocolate babka. They have a tender, flaky pastry wrapped around a bittersweet truffle-like filling that’s sprinkled with chopped nuts or cocoa nibs for a contrasting crunch. A topping of Demerara sugar adds texture, and a little flaky sea salt cuts the sweetness perfectly. These are best served within five days of baking (store them in an airtight container at room temperature). They also freeze well for up to one month, with parchment or waxed paper between layers.
Hibiscus-Spiraled Ginger Cookies
Floral hibiscus and citrus zest, along with coarse sugar, make up a delightful swirl in a buttery shortbread dough with contrasting textures from chewy candied ginger and caramelized raw sugar. Every bite of this cookie is suffused with delicately sweet flavors, which are complemented by a slight fruity tang. For the prettiest spiral, make sure to roll your log tightly. The log can be wrapped and frozen for up to one month, or refrigerated for up to three days, then sliced and baked without thawing.
Guava and Cream Cheese Twists
In Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean, pastelillos (also known as pastelitos) are flaky pastry turnovers that taste like bliss when eaten fresh from the bakery, their jammy guava centers fused with creamy cheese. These cookies capture a bit of that magic in packable, sturdy sweets that can be kept for days and easily shared or shipped. Instead of being filled with perishable cream cheese, these have it blended into their buttery dough to incorporate that tangy richness. Guava paste seals into the pastry while baking, delivering a chewy fruitiness with each bite.
Chocolate-Molasses Cookies
All you need to shape this dead simple dough are your hands (and maybe a helper or two). Decidedly more “grown up” in flavor — both the molasses and cocoa give bitter notes that play off the spiciness of the fresh ginger — the cookies are tiny in size by design to complement their intensity. For rolling, any coarse decorative sugar works, as would Demerara or an unrefined sugar.
Savory Mixed-Nut Shortbread
Inspired by the cocktail nuts served at Union Square Cafe in New York City — butter-rich, toasty warm and fragrant with rosemary and cayenne — this no-mixer press-in cookie is a joy to make. You simply melt butter with rosemary and black pepper, stir that into dry ingredients, and then press the dough into a pan. Salted nuts and more fresh rosemary go on top before the whole thing is baked and broken into ragged pieces. Persnickety cookie, this is not. Enjoy on a cheese board, with cocktails or after dinner with tea and dark chocolate. Or pack these in a cellophane bag and tie it with a bow to share as a gift. (The cookies will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week.)
Frosted Holiday Sugar Cookies
Whether you're making Santas or dreidls, shamrocks or bunnies, this foolproof cookie and royal icing recipe is the only one you need. Don't skip chilling the dough after rolling it out. It really helps the cookies keep their shape while baking. And if you'd like to frost the cookies very generously, consider doubling the icing amounts below.
Natalie Haughton's Chocolate Almond Crunch Cookies
Cheddar Cheese Coins
These snacks are packed with an intense cheese flavor that comes from blending extra-sharp Cheddar with nutty Parmesan. Mild scallions and spicy black pepper bring additional savory notes, which play up that cheesiness. The coins have golden crispy edges and slightly tender centers. They’re great for snacking on the go, serving as part of a cheese board or dunking into tomato soup. The recipe can easily be doubled for a holiday cookie swap, and the dough can be made 1 month ahead and kept frozen wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and stored in a resealable plastic bag; simply thaw, cut and bake when ready.
Chocolate Sugar Cookies
These are almost brownie-like in flavor, and remain slightly softer than many traditional sugar cookies. The recipe was developed by Georganne Bell, a professional cookie-decorating teacher in Salt Lake City who doesn’t like traditional vanilla sugar cookies. Unlike many sugar cookies, these don’t need to chill, and can be rolled out immediately after they are mixed. Avoid the temptation to add more flour (unless the dough is really sticky), or to use too much flour while rolling and cutting them, or the cookies will be dry. They don’t spread in the oven, so you can bake them close together. They are sturdy enough to decorate wildly with colored royal icing, but also taste good with just buttercream or a simple glaze of powdered sugar and water flavored with a little lemon juice or vanilla.
Toasted Pine Nut Cookies
These pine nut butter cookies gain a new dimension simply by toasting the pignoli.
Spritz Cookies
A basic cookie dough recipe is at the heart of this treat, great for any occasion. A cookie press (think of a caulking machine, but with cookie dough) offers lots of versatility, whether you're looking for wreaths for the holidays or hearts for Valentine's Day. Just beat together the ingredients, and place the dough in the press just after mixing. Push the dough through onto parchment paper, decorate with colored sugars and bake. They'll add a bit of color and joy to any cookie platter.
Cherry Rugelach With Cardamom Sugar
These tender, jam-filled confections, adapted from “Rose’s Christmas Cookies” (William Morrow, 1990) by Rose Levy Beranbaum, have a flaky, cream cheese-spiked crust that makes them a little like soft, tiny pastries. This version calls for cherry preserves and some optional walnuts, but you can use any flavor of jam (or nut if you’re so inclined) you like. Apricot and raspberry jam are the most traditional. Rugelach keep well at room temperature for up to one week, or they freeze beautifully for up to six months. (Watch Melissa Clark make her cherry rugelach.)
Grammy’s Spice Cookies
This recipe for spice cookies came to The Times from Claire Will of San Francisco after a callout for favorite holiday recipes. At first, it seemed rather plain Jane, but the hefty dose of ground cloves (3/4 teaspoon) was what lured me into testing it, and I have to admit I was skeptical. I was soon a believer. Of the five kinds of cookies I served to a group at a holiday party, those crisp-edged, soft-centered beauties were the first to vanish. One friend texted on his way home, “send recipe for spice cookies a.s.a.p.”
Rich Chocolate Cookies
This recipe for the chocolate cookies was sent to The New York Times several years ago by Mari Pfeiffer, a reader in California; it’s from the cookbook “Great Cookies,” published in 2003 by the author and teacher Carole Walter. The cookies are imbued with deep flavor from the combination of cocoa powder, unsweetened chocolate and espresso powder. Decorate them with royal icing. “Other icings — buttercream, melted white or dark chocolate or ganache — would take away from the cookie’s simple yet amazing flavor,” said Ms. Pfeiffer, who often cuts the dough into letters to spell out seasonal messages.
Vanilla Bean Spritz Cookies
Delicate, buttery and festooned with colored sugar or sprinkles, spritz cookies are a holiday staple. You can make excellent ones without any special items like the vanilla bean paste and cultured butter called for here. But those ingredients will make your cookies even more delicious. You can leave them tasting purely of vanilla, or add another optional flavoring, such as citrus zest, cinnamon or cardamom, or almond extract. These fragile cookies don’t ship well on their own, but you can increase their stability by turning them into sandwich cookies, filled with chocolate, Nutella, or thick jam.
Aunt Phillomena’s Pizzelle
At the holidays, these crisp, simple cookies are stacked everywhere in Italian kitchens. My family was from Abruzzi, and my mother always used the recipe from her older sister. You can scent these cookies with orange, almond or lemon or just vanilla, but we always made plenty with anise at Christmas. You can use a simple stove-top pizzelle maker or an electric one. I prefer the kind without a non-stick coating. A little shot of cooking spray or a wipe with some cooking oil helps prime the press. Like pancakes, you will probably throw away the first one.
Pistachio Linzer Cookies With Orange Marmalade
These are linzer cookies — with a twist. Pistachios replace almonds, and orange blossom water accentuates the flavor of the pistachios and orange marmalade. They're much tangier and a bit less sweet than the traditional ones, but just as buttery, rich and compelling.
Holiday Jam Cookies
Almond Spritz Cookies
A holiday classic found in nearly every cookie box, these almond-flavored treats are buttery, crisp and all too easy to eat by the handful (fear not, this recipe makes a lot). Spritz cookies also keep well, for up to two weeks stored in an airtight container at room temperature. If you don’t have a spritz gun, you can use a pastry bag to form them. Or, for more rustic versions, skip the pressing altogether. Chill the dough for an hour, then roll out 1-inch balls, placing them 1 ½ inches apart on the baking sheets, then use a fork to flatten them. A sprinkle of colored sugar makes everything pretty.
Linzer Trees
These are a reworking of an old “Joy of Cooking” recipe I learned from my friend in Atlanta, Allison Dykes. They are the precious stars of her holiday cookie plate. The dough can be slightly finicky but can be re-rolled and re-chilled several times so all the scraps get used. The ideal thickness is somewhere between an eighth and a fourth of an inch. They need to be thin but not so thin that the delicate cookie breaks. The roasted almonds can be ground in a food processor.
Classic Sugar Cookies
Everyone needs a good sugar cookie recipe. If you can master the very simple technique behind this one dough, you have several variations at your disposal, most likely without a trip to the grocery store.
Natasha And Atrina's Gingerbread Cookies
Brunsli
Agnes F. Hostettler, of Statesville, N.C., was 72 when she shared this recipe with The Times in 1990. She baked brunsli and zimt sterne each Christmas, as they were the cookies she baked as a child with her mother in Germany. The year she contributed this recipe, she has already baked about 1,000 cookies that she has sent to her five daughters. “My daughters all have my recipes,” she said. “But they say, ‘Mom, they never taste as good as when you make them.’ ”
Master Shortbread Recipe
If you use half a pound of butter in a batch of cookies, it becomes “short” — because “short” means, historically, pastry with a high percentage of fat. Thus shortbread cookies are — when correctly made — rich, crumbly and impossible to resist. In their simplest form, they taste mostly of sweet and sweetened butter, so the best butter you can lay your hands on will make a difference here. I like that side-of-the-tongue tingling presence of saltiness, and so I tend to use a little more salt than is strictly necessary, hence the range in the recipe.