If you love cookies than Christmas time is your jam and Christmas cookies are your favorite. Here are the most delicious, interesting, and seasonal cookies for this time of year. (And one you shouldn’t bother with.)
Ginger Snaps
Or gingerbread men. Either way, ginger cookies taste delicious and are perfect for that spiced, seasonal taste. Ginger cookies have a distinct ginger taste to them and depending on the recipe, they can be soft or hard. They’re also typically rolled in sugar before being baked making them almost savory and sweet at the same time.
Sugar Cookie Cutouts
These are fun, delicious, and frankly one of the best cookies to make. For sugar cookies, you can get as fun and seasonal as you want with shapes like Christmas trees, stars, squares (like presents,) gingerbread shapes, or more. You could also just go with circular cookies and top them with red or green frosting, red and green sprinkles, or even make them fancy with gold or silver balls. Plus, who doesn’t like sugar cookies?
Candy Cane Cookies
Because after all it is Christmas. For these, use a sugar cookie dough and split your dough into two sections. Add some red food coloring to half and kneed and mix it until it’s red. Make “worms” or 4” long circular ropes with the red and the regular dough, separately. Then take one red and one dough and carefully twist them together to make, you guessed it, candy canes!
Spritz Cookies
These butter cookies are almost as Christmas as the tree. While some people refer to them as dry, crumbly, and plain, others call them their favorite cookie and make them every year. You can dye the dough for spritz cookies as well but you will need a cookie press for this type of Christmas cookie. And you will also need seasonal pieces for the press such as trees, stars, and wreaths. Little shiny red and green balls are festive and fun for these cookies, too.
Pignoli Cookies
Also known as pine nuts, these cookies are nut covered and slightly sweet. Pinoli cookies are a classic even though they look very different and understated for something as typically loud and boisterous as Christmas cookies. Italian families cannot get enough of them and even though they aren’t a fan favorite, they aren’t really going the way of the dodo either.
Stained Glass Cookies
You know what stained glass looks like, and now, imagine that look in a cookie! These cookies are delicious and really beautiful. You can make them in all different colors as essentially the stained glass part of the cookie is made out of jolly ranchers. This makes them beautiful and shiny, just like the name implies, but not something I would want to eat. I mean soft or even hard cookie, with a candy so hard in the middle you can’t even eat it right away or bite into it? I don’t understand the appeal but they are pretty enough to bring to any party or share with any guest.
Molasses Cookies
This is absolutely a seasonal cookie and you have to really have a particular palette to enjoy these. They are called Molasses cookies for a reason and that reason is, well, this cookie is full of molasses, it’s molasses forward, and really only tastes like molasses. So, if you like molasses, these cookies are for you. And if you don’t, then I would suggest against it. However, if you have not tried molasses cookies before, you really should.
Snowball Cookies
These are cute and seasonal but really a pain in the ass. Not only are they covered with powdered sugar, but if you eat one, it will ensure that you are, too. Snacking on these snowball cookies with ensure white powdered sugar covers your fingers, hands, and lips, but also your outfit. What better accessory for the Christmas holiday than the look of winter-y white all over you? Or powdered sugar, as it were. But these are the most Christmas cookies there are.
Shortbread Cookies
No, no, and no. These are not Christmas-y, in fact, they really have no taste at all. If it were dipped into a tea, I guess these plain, unsweetened and honestly boring cookies would make the cut. But for everyone’s favorite holiday? Nope. They just will not do.
Do you have a tradition of making Christmas cookies? My family made them all from ribbon cookies to spritz cookies to ribbon cookies, peanut butter cookies, and of course, rice cereal wreathes. You can add your ginger tea recipes to go with the cookies! Happy almost Christmas!