Baking christmas cookies is one of the most cherished activities for many families at christmas time. But sometimes those weeks before the holiday are just too crammed with activities! If you don´t have the time for baking christmas cookies this year, there´s no reason to feel guilty – it´s not a disgrace to just buy some! However, especially if you have children, no cookie baking in advent may not be an option for you – it certainly is something my family would miss dearly! If, like this year, there is especially little time for baking, we always come back to these easy, traditional christmas cookies. They are all from one basic dough, but it allows for lots of variations!
Jump down here to the recipe if you want to start baking right away.
You will find in this post a recipe for traditional christmas cookies – but actually, for four sorts of them:
- Quick and simple cookies that literally take only 15 -20 minutes to make (yes, all in all)
- black-and-white cookies
- plain vanilla cookies, the best for using all those cute cookie cutters
- lemon cookies with icing, great for using cookie cutters as well as sugar pearls and the like.
In addition, those with some baking experience can easily change this recipe to make hazelnut cookies with chocolate coating!
Traditional christmas cookies in just 15 minutes
The most simple type of cookies is made just from the most basic dough, which consists only of flour, butter, sugar, and eggs. If you keep your kitchen fairly cool, which I do, you don´t even have to refridgerate it before shaping the cookies. So depending on whether you blend the ingredients with an electric device or, like me, just with your hands, it will take you about five minutes to make the dough (ten if your children are helping with it).
Shaping the cookies will take anything from five minutes upwards, depending on your ambitions and those of your helpers. And baking them will take five to ten minutes per tray.
And that´s it!
The ideal christmas cookie recipe for really quick baking and for christmas baking with children
So if you choose the simplest and quickest type of cookies, and do it by yourself, you can actually make some within fifteen minutes. This makes it quite easy to decide spontaneously that when a friend calls you to say she´s coming over for a cup of coffee, you will also be having some cookies.
But, here´s the thing: Within only little more time can you make several different sorts of cookies, all from the same basic dough! All of these traditional christmas cookies are great for busy families, and the vanilla and lemon as well as the basic cookies are ideal for cutting out with cookie cutters together with your children, because the dough does not break quite as easily as some other cookie doughs.
Let´s begin with the simple dough:
Basic dough for plain 15 minute cookies
If you decide to make several sorts of cookies from this dough, please read on to the end to make sure you have all the ingredients for the different cookies you choose to bake. And also to make sure you blend the additional ingredients in at the right time.
Ingredients for plain christmas cookies
Flour: either white wheat flour or spelt flour, wholegrain or medium white – 500g
Butter or baking margarine (at least 60% fat content), room temperature – 250g
Sugar: white sugarbeet or brown cane sugar -200g
2 medium sized eggs (they serve as raising agents, so no other raising agent is needed)
optional: A small pinch of salt
If you´re in a hurry and want to bake these cookies, jump down to baking instructions here!
Additional ingredients for vanilla christmas cookies and lemon christmas cookies
For vanilla cookies: one bag (10g) of vanilla sugar (flavoring or real vanilla), or two drops of liquid vanilla flavoring. (Did you know how beautiful the vanilla flower is? And that real vanilla, which stems originally from Central and South America, is an endangered plant? Here´s some information about it.)
For lemon cookies: one bag (6g) of lemon sugar (flavoring) or two drops of liquid lemon flavoring. Or grated peel of one organic lemon. AND 100ml powdered sugar, plus one tablespoon of lemon juice for icing. (Alternatively, you can use 100ml of powdered sugar, one small eggwhite and another drop of lemon flavoring.) Some decor to sprinkle on the icing, if wanted.
Additional ingredient for black-and-white cookies
One tablespoon of cocoa powder (make sure to use real, pure cocoa powder, not powdered chocolate).
What to do
Put all ingredients for the basic (!) dough into a bowl.
Blend and mix them until you have a firm, non-sticky dough and no leftover flour. If you have an electric device for making dough, this is the time to use it. If you don´t, like me, you begin by moving a knife (not too pointed) through the bowl, thereby cutting the butter into ever smaller pieces. The other ingredients will stick to the butter more and more. When you get the impression that the knife is no longer useful, you start mixing the ingredients with your hands. If the bowl you are using is too narrow for both of your hands, you can empty it onto the table and finish preparing the dough right on the tabletop.
(If you want to bake the most simple cookies, you can now roll out the dough, cut cookies and bake them for 5-10 minutes at 200 degree Celsius (175 degree celsius with circular heat).)
Divide the dough into four equal parts. You will need one part for vanilla cookies, one for lemon cookies and two for black-and-white cookies.
Making three kinds of cookies from your one dough
Vanilla cookies and lemon cookies: Take one part of the dough and knead in with your hands the vanilla flavoring. Take a second part of the dough and knead in the vanilla flavoring with your hands. To do this, you can just poke a hole into the dough with your finger and put in the flavoring, then close the hole and knead. If the dough gets warm and sticky, put it in the refridgerator for as long as it takes you to prepare the black-and-white cookies.You can now roll out the dough on the table or countertop (spread a thin layer of flour underneath to prevent sticking) and shape cookies with cookie cutters. Or, even quicker, roll up the dough to a sausage shape and cut it into thin slices.
Black-and-white cookies: Take the third part of the dough. Roll it out thickly, then distribute one tablespoon of cocoa powder on it. Roll it in, knead.
Roll out both this part and the remaining, fourth part of the dough. Roll them into equal sizes and thickness as best you can. Then place one on top of the other.
Now roll them both together. You will get a “sausage” shape. From this, you cut fairly thin slices with a knife – as thin as you can without squeezing them too much.
Baking instructions for all of the christmas cookies
Line a baking tray with baking paper.
Place the cookies on the lined baking tray and put them into the oven
Bake for five minutes, then check. If necessary, keep baking (check every 2 minutes), ten minutes is the maximum time. They should still have their original color, only slightly gold-brown at the edges.
Take the cookies out, remove from the baking tray. After cooling off completely, you can store them in a tin or stainless steel box for at least two weeks (no guarantee, just personal experience, I take no responsibility for any of your decisions – but actually I have stored these cookies for four weeks in a cool dry place and they were fine).
Icing for lemon cookies
Wait – before you store your cookies away, you want to put icing on your lemon cookies. And surely your children or grandchildren are already waiting to decorate them! Of course you can also use this icing if you have only made the simplest cookies withiut lemon flavoring.
Put 100g powdered sugar into a cup. Add lemon juice (or lemon flavoring and eggwhite) in very small quantities. Every time you have added some, stir really well. It is quite surprising how little liquid the powdered sugar needs to dissolve, and it needs to be still really stiff and sticky if you want a crust of visible, white icing. So stop adding liquid when you have reached that very sticky, just spreadable non-clumpy consistency. Spread the icing on your cookies with a small pastry brush and decorate with sugar pearls or whatever you may have. For a more sophisticated look and taste, try chopped pistacchio and almonds.
Thicker icing and baisers
For a thicker icing that can be used to “paint” on cookies with a piping bag, you need:
1 eggwhite and 250 g of powdered sugar. If wanted, food coloring of your choice. This is also what you need for the baisers.
For both icing and baisers, beat the eggwhite to a firm froth in a narrow bowl, using an electric stirrer. Then keep beating, adding the sugar spoon by spoon. When egg and sugar have combined to an even, creamy and very sticky substance, you can fill it in the piping bag.
If you want different colors, do not fill in the piping bag yet: First, put your desired quantity of icing into a cup and add a few drops of coloring. Stir well with a teaspoon. If the icing gets too runny (after all, coloring is a liquid), just stir in some more powdered sugar. Now fill your icing into the piping bag. Apply to the cookies after baking. If you want sprinkles, put them on quickly as this icing will dry fast.
For baisers, take the leftover icing you have or make some for this purpose. Pre-heat your oven to 100 degree celsius, put little blobs of icing on a lined baking tray, then bake the baisers for about ten minutes depending on their size,
A brief introduction to hazelnut cookies
If you are familiar with the procedure of melting chocolate coating in a water bath, you don´t need a separate recipe for hazelnut cookies: Just replace half of the flour with ground hazelnuts, bake biscuits, melt coating chocolate in a water bath and then brush it on your cookies.
Last minute cookie gift idea (keep the kids busy while they are waiting…)
I wanted to post these recipes earlier, but my entire family including myself had a really bad cold for the last week or so which kept me in bed when I wasn´t needed by everyone else. I´m glad these cookies are so quick and simple to make, which also makes them great last-minute cookies. If your children are a bit older, you can prepare the dough (depending on age and experience, they could even do that on their own) and let them roll and cut the dough by themselves, while you do some other holiday preparations. You´ll probably want to help them with the oven, but after that you could let them decorate the cookies by themselves. They could even make them into a christmas present for someone!
For more last minute christmas gift ideas, I have linked for you my post on thrifty christmas gifts that won´t clutter up people´s homes. Have fun finding or making christmas presents! And enjoy your biscuits!
Do leave a comment below the subscription form! Is baking christmas cookies a favorite activity, or are you more into just eating them? What are your experiences with the cookie recipes I shared in this post?
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