Christmas Cookie Recipes
Dec 04, 2020, Updated Dec 02, 2025
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I’ve been making these Christmas cookies for years and they are the most festive, fun, and flavorful cookies for the holidays!
These are great recipes for a Christmas party or holiday cookie swap and while you’re baking, make sure you make one of my Christmas cocktails! You can also check out 10 ways to decorate Christmas cookies!
Check out all of my cookie recipes too!
The Best Christmas Cookie Recipes
Now let the fun begin! We can’t wait to see what you whip up this holiday season. Remember, you can always make extra to freeze! They make wonderful gifts too. The Best Peanut Butter Blossoms
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These peanut butter blossoms are soft and chewy and combine a nutty winter flavor with a smooth chocolatey center. These are perfect for holidays or for an indulgent snack! We make this Christmas cookies recipe every year.
Chewy Ginger Cookies
A classic Christmas cookie, these chewy ginger cookeis are some of the best! Made with molasses, ginger syrup, and spices topped with honey and ginger chips! You will love these soft molasses cookies.
Chocolate Pistachio Wreath Cookies
These buttery, chocolate pistachio wreath cookies are perfect for the holidays! Pistachio cookie dough is twisted with chocolate dough to make a beautiful cookie shaped like a holiday wreath.
Cutout Shortbread Cookies
Buttery, delicate, and melt-in-your-mouth cutout shortbread cookies! These cookies are so good they can be made into any shape and served year-round.
Christmas Sugar Cookies
Buttery Christmas sugar cookies with creamy buttercream frosting. These are classic sugar cookies and perfect for Christmas! Kids love to decorate this classic cookie too. Set out sprinkles and piping bags full of frosting and let them create beautiful cookies!
Buttery Christmas Wreaths
These delicious buttery Christmas wreath cookies will impress your guests and make your Christmas party even more special.
Biscotti Recipe with Cranberries and Pistachios
This biscotti recipe is truly the best! It uses sweetened dried cranberries, and pistachios and each cookie is dipped in melted white chocolate.
Gingerbread Spice Spritz Cookies
A classic buttery, spritz cookie made with gingerbread flavor and spice. They’re super festive and full of flavor! They’re also adorable and the shapes make them incredibly charming. If there is one fun and unique Christmas cookies recipe to make, it’s these! Your friends and family will love them.
Gingersnap Cookie Recipe
Gingersnaps are a classic holiday cookie. They’re made with spices and molasses and have a crispy edge with a buttery snap and a delicious chewy center. They have the perfect balance of ginger flavor.
Mini Gingerbread Houses
Mini gingerbread houses are the ultimate festive treat! These tiny, charming houses are a scaled-down version of the classic gingerbread house, perfect for perching on mugs, gifting to loved ones, or for gingerbread parties!
Melt in Your Mouth Snowball Cookies
Classic snowball cookies covered in powdered sugar. These easy cookies are soft, buttery, and perfect for Christmas. They’re a traidtional Mexican dessert too and they’re the best holiday cookies.
Sugar Free Christmas Cookie Cutouts
A buttery, sugar-free cookies recipe that’s perfect for holiday cutout cookies. This recipe is made with Truvia Sweet Complete sweetener and decorated with cream cheese frosting.
Pair these with our guilt-free hot chocolate for an extra special treat.
Thumbprint Cookies
These jam thumbprint cookies are truly one of our favorite Christmas cookies! They’re buttery shortbread cookies, rolled in crushed walnuts and filled with jam! Festive and delicious for the holidays.
Chewy Snickerdoodle Cookies
This is the best, chewy snickerdoodle recipe! It makes the perfect snickerdoodle cookie with all the classic ingredients. Easy to make and full of cinnamon and sugar flavor! You can also turn them into ice cream sandwiches!
Chocolate Cherry Chunk Cookies
These chocolate cherry chunk cookies have been a family favorite for years! These cookies have buttery crisp edges and are filled with holdiay flavors like dried chewy cherries, oats, and pecans and chocolate chunks. They can be enjoyed right out of the freezer. This is one of the cookies we make them every single year.
Gingerbread Man Cookies
This is the perfect gingerbread man cookies recipe and the only recipe you’ll ever need for gingerbread! This Christmas cookie recipe is the one we use year after year. They make perfect cut-out cookies and are fun to decorate.
The Best Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
Chocolate crinkle cookies are one of the most delightful, fudgy treats! They have the perfect crinkle on top when baked and stay super chocolatey inside!
Chocolate Cherry Cookies
These chocolate cherry cookies are made with a soft chocolate cookie, baked with a maraschino cherry inside, and topped with delicious chocolate fudge. They are absolutely delicious!
Roly-Poly Santa Cookies
Our very favorite Christmas cookies!! These Santa cookies are so adorable, so tasty, and great to make with your kids! With their buttery flavor, chocolate eyes, and frosted beards, they’ll stand out at any Festive party. Hands down the yummiest Christmas cookies to come down your chimney!
Rosemary Shortbread Cookies
These are the best rosemary shortbread cookies made with brown sugar! Make them any shape you like for the holidays. These cookies have so much buttery flavor, the perfect crisp edge and make wonderful cookies for the holidays!
Classic Gingerbread House
The holidays will soon be upon us, and that means one thing: It’s time to master the art of the gingerbread house! This step-by-step guide will help you build a gingerbread house like a pro!
You can also make mini gingerbread houses to go on hot chocolate mugs or as gifts.
Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies
These are classic peanut butter cookies with a chewy texture. They are perfect for serving around Christmas time and can be dipped in melted chocolate or white chocolate. Add festive sprinkles to them for an extra festive look.
Chocolate Sable Cookies with Pistachios
These cookies aren’t too sweet and have a buttery flavor and crumble texture. They are a cross between a biscotti and a shortbread cookie with chocolate chunks and pistachios.
More Holiday Christmas Cookie Recipes
- Gingerbread Spiced Cookies
- Classic Peanut Butter Cookies
- Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Butteries Chocolate Chip Cookies
FAQs
When you start baking Christmas cookies entirely depends on the demands of your household and your priorities. Some people must have their cookies baked fresh. If that’s you, just make sure you’ve got your ingredients prepared in advance and chosen a recipe that you’re comfortable making at the last minute.
If you’ve got a bigger family and there’s just too much to do on the day, or you prefer to get fully organized in advance, you can freeze your cookies. There’s also a way to make your dough in advance and bake cookies fresh on the day. Read on to find out more.
The Culinary Institute of America suggests that baked cookies keep best when you wrap them individually, as exposing them to the air is likely to dry them out.
You can stretch your batches further by making up a large chunk of dough and storing a portion of it, unbaked, in the refrigerator until you’re ready to bake fresh cookies. The mixture lasts for a surprising two weeks, so you can make dough far in advance and bake it fresh on the day.
Christmas is a time of generosity and togetherness, and you should reflect this when sharing your cookies with friends and family.
It’s traditional to give at least two to three cookies to each person in the household, but better yet, give them more. Let them know if the batch can be frozen so that they can feast on your baked goods in their own time.
Proper storage can ensure your Christmas cookies stay fresher for longer. You don’t need to spend lots of money on packaging (although you can if that’s your thing!) There are plenty of DIY cookie wrapping ideas you can check out to hone your presentation skills. Once you’re ready, follow these steps to pack your cookies:
Choose a metal tin or airtight container for optimum freshness.
Line the container with parchment or waxed paper.
Place cookies in carefully, one at a time so you can separate each one with parchment or waxes paper.
Avoid putting crunchy cookies, and soft cookies in the same container as the crisp ones will soften a little.
Seal the packaging and decorate as creatively and fancifully as you can!
You can also make dehydrated orange slices and add them to the cookie tin too. They look so festive and smell wonderful.
How Do You Keep Cookies Fresh for Christmas?
There are several ways you can get around keeping your Christmas cookies fresh. You can bake them up to three months in advance and freeze them, leaving you loads of time to get prepared.
Another option is to make the dough in advance. Either make it four months in advance and freeze it or make it a couple of weeks ahead and store it in the refrigerator until you’re ready to bake them fresh.
Cookies in a Jar
Another great cookie gift idea is giving cookies in a jar. Basically, you measure out all of the dry ingredients and pack them in a large glass jar. Then print out a tag for the recipe and let the guests add in the wet ingredients. This way they can have freshly baked cookies and only do half the work!
We have turned two of our most popular cookie recipes into cookie jars with printable tags. They make wonderful gifts!
Tips for Making Christmas Cookies
- Use quality ingredients like organic butter and eggs, pure vanilla, etc.
- Use our conversion chart to help with measurements.
- Know the difference between baking soda and baking powder.
- Use room temperature ingredients unless noted otherwise.
- Know how to properly measure flour and how to use flour substitutes, like almond flour.
- Always check the chill time as some cookies need to be chilled before they’re baked.
- Use good quality ingredients when baking. Whole, organic ingredients will give you the best results.
- If you want to make gluten-free cookies, use a Gluten-Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour.
If you make any of our Christmas cookie recipes, please leave a comment below! We’d love to know which ones you enjoyed the most.
