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
Hungry for more? Subscribe to my newsletter and follow along on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram for all of the latest updates.
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!!
Are these cookies suitable to freeze and then thaw and ice later?
I just made over 100 cookies with 3 different classes at school and we froze them once completely cool between baking paper and they were still perfect when we got them out to decorate with fondant
I have frozen them before and they were perfect
Did you freeze them when raw or after they were cooked? Thanks
I am making Christmas cookies for the business I work for customers.. do you think these would freeze/ unthaw ok if I flash froze so they don’t stick together?
Could i use coconut sugar with these?
Did these biscuits with the kids very crumbly but we had a great time. Worked perfectly.
How long will the raw dough store intge fridge please? Can the raw dough be frozen?
Thanks
In a word yum. Quick and easy. Making these but in a heart shape for Mother’s Day fundraiser. Thank you.
Been looking for a good cutout recipe. This is it. Doubled it with no problems at all. Never had dough so easy to handle and roll with no chilling! The castor sugar is key, and ensure it’s whipped in the butter until light pale yellow and you’ll have gorgeous texture bikkies!
Mine spread a bit. What did I do wrong. 🤷♀️
This is the BEST cookie recipe with Royal Icing! Cookies hold their shape while baking and the Royal Icing makes them delicious and decorative! Great for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, etc. Thanks for sharing Nagi!!
Excellent recipe!! Soooo tasty and easy to make, thank you 🙂
Love them!
Can I keep the dough in the fridge for a day if I make extra dough?
Thanks Nagi!!
Yes i did
Making 100s of these cookies as gifts this year ❤️❤️🤤
Hi! I was going to make this cookie recipe and I was wondering if I could split the ingredients in half? Since that is a bit too much for me!
These cookies are honestly delicious, I almost smashed the whole batch myself 🤣. I love to cook and bake, and cookies never work out for me, but this recipe is fool proof! I would 100000% make these again and again, and alter decorations and shapes for various occasions. Love, love, love them!
Made a batch of these biscuits for my daughter and her friends to decorate. The dough came together beautifully and rolled well and the finished biscuits tasted good. Thanks for a simple, tasty recipe!
Love this christmas cookies, quick and asy recepie. But will like to knowhowtostore the icing if you dont use it all in one go and have left over its a shame to go to waste. Does anyone know ?? Thank you & Merry Christmas everyone.
LOVE these. I’ve made many different recipes, but these will now be my new “go to” for cut outs. Really like the subtly, light flavor. Haven’t even tried icing them yet!
No Chilling and they’re still perfect! I used these as cookie crusts in my mini muffin pans. They were absolute perfect! Also made the recipe for sugar cookies to decorate. ( I had to use an extra TB of butter becuz dough was crumbly. (A bit weird becuz I didn’t have to add extra for the mini-muffin cookies.). Also, I did 1 tsp almond extract + 1 tsp vanilla. Next time I will do 1/2 tsp vanilla + 1 1/2tsp almond extract as I didn’t really taste the almond flavor. The cookie dough was so easy to work with. Super time saver not having to chill. I will add, knowing that everyone’s oven is different-mine is especially old & and uneven cooker- I had to pull my cookies out at 6-7 mins@365*F. They almost looked uncooked. If I baked until all edges were golden brown, the cookies came out pretty dry. Good flavor & great for decorating, but I like a chewier/softer cookie. Good luck everyone. Hope everyone loves this recipe as much as I do. This is one I will be handing down! It’s a permanent addition to the holidays! Thank you Nagi!!
What can we replace the egg with.?
Hi Sneha, I know your comment is from a while ago but I just made this cookie recipe with the ‘well & good’ brand egg replacer and the cookies were perfect. Hope this helps
Is the nutrition facts based on one cookie or two ?
Made these today, very pleased with them. Going to freeze them when iced.
Thank you for the recipe.🍪🍪