The Best Christmas Cookie Recipes to Make This Holiday Season

There are few things in the world increasingly suggestive of holiday memories than the scent of cookies sultry in the oven. For me, the aromas of Mexican wedding cookies (or, “sand tarts,” as my grandmother tabbed them) and sugar cookies cut in reindeer or ornament shapes are like Christmas bottled up in a scent. The big question? Whether to stick with the old favorites or requite some new, increasingly venturesome flavors a whirl. The answer, of course, is to do both. And don’t worry, considering our roundup of the weightier Christmas cookie recipes is sure to include just the one you’re craving. Alimony scrolling for all the recipes you’ll overly need—this holiday and beyond.

33 of the Weightier Christmas Cookie Recipes to Try This Holiday

Psst… If you’re starving increasingly creative cookie recipes, we have just the thing! The Camille Styles team partnered with the weightier supplies bloggers and recipe developers to create our self-ruling Holiday Cookie Guide: 10 Sectional Recipes From Your Favorite Bakers. This guide includes 10 sectional recipes, tips for how to host your own cookie swap, and movie pairings for the perfect cozy night in. Enjoy!

Chocolate Peppermint Snowball Cookies

Why We Love It: These treats are Christmas cookie gold. Chocolate and peppermint is a pairing I squint forward to enjoying every holiday season, and a batch of these satisfies the seasonal craving. These full-length a molten chocolate part-way and a double dose of peppermint flavor. Cancel all my plans—I’m staying in tonight and sultry these.

Hero Ingredient: A chocolate sultry disc tucked into each cookie is the secret to the ooey-gooey lava goodness.

Chocolate Orange Linzer Shortbread Cookies

Why We Love It: Chocolatey, buttery, and oh-so-beautiful, these cookies roll all the wholesome parts of the holidays into one succulent bite. While most Linzer cookies use jam for the filling, these make stunning use of an orange-infused chocolate ganache. They’ll pretty up any cookie plate they’re a part of.

Hero Ingredient: Chocolate and orange is a dream cookie combo. Using the citrus zest in both the dough and the ganache makes it happen.

Chewy Pumpkin Chocolate Tweedle Cookies

Why We Love It: Raise your hand if you could eat pumpkin cookies all throughout the year. (Me!) Sure, pumpkin is most associated with October, but I love its sweet, warming savor well into the holidays. If I found these beyond-chewy, chocolate chip-laced delights in a holiday cookie box, you can bet I’d be a happy eater.

Hero Ingredient: Chocolate tweedle cookies—yes, plane those that full-length pumpkin as their primary flavor—benefit from a little sprinkle of sea salt. It’s key to giving them a uplift of

Orange Cranberry, Pistachio, and Cardamom White Chocolate Slice and Torch Cookies

Why We Love It: I love slice-and-bake cookies considering 1) they’re veritably delish and 2) they’re a walkover to make superiority of time and torch whenever you’re in need of a fresh cookie. Simply mix your dough together, roll it into wax paper, and store in the freezer until you’re ready to, well, slice and bake. This particular recipe makes the most of this easy method and brings tons of festivity and savor to the final result. They’re creative, whimsical, and totally drool-worthy.

Hero Ingredient: The drizzled white chocolate is exactly what you need to send these cookies over the top.

Chocolate Bourbon Biscuits

Why We Love It: There’s nothing increasingly nostalgic than a sandwich cookie, but these biscuits are a step up from your expected Oreo affair. The shortbread dough keeps these cookies soft and chewy and espresso powder brings out the chocolatey flavor. All you need is your favorite tea for dipping.

Hero Ingredient: I can’t think of a increasingly perfect filling for these cookies than chocolate hazelnut spread.

Peppermint Hot Chocolate Shortbread Cookies

Why We Love It: These cookies agree: there’s nothing increasingly comforting than sipping a mug of warm cocoa on a unprepossessed winter day. Get ready to transform your hot chocolate craving.

Hero Ingredient: Peppermint hot cocoa mix is the no-fail solution to ensuring that these cookies taste just like your favorite wintertime drink.

Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies

Why We Love It: The key to perfecting these cookies’ soft, scrutinizingly cake-like texture is sultry them in a muffin tin. Undeniability them a cookie, undeniability them a brownie, undeniability them a brookie (actually, don’t do that)—but regardless of your chosen moniker, these treats are sure to delight. If you want a chocolate cookie that’s fudgy and full of frosting, this is the one to bake.

Hero Ingredient: Ferrero rocher chocolates as an widow topping delivers just the right value of decadence that I’m starving this time of year.

Chai Chocolate Dipped Christmas Cookies

Why We Love It: I love my chai sweet and spicy, and these cookies have the nuanced savor lanugo pat. They do the archetype sugar cookie justice by creating slightly well-done edges and a soft, tender middle. The chai spices combined with the widow orange zest alimony the dough from leaning too sweet. And when you add sprinkles and dip it in chocolate, you’ve got a Christmas cookie recipe for the books.

Hero Ingredient: I can’t segregate between all the spice options—they bring a little something special to each bite.

Chewy Pumpkin Spice Cookies with Cinnamon Glaze

Why We Love It: Sure, these don’t necessarily scream Christmas, but truthfully, I require a little pumpkin all throughout the colder months. If you can’t stand a dry cookie and require a melt-in-your-mouth texture, these deliver. I like them weightier straight from the oven (with the warm, pumpkin zephyr still in the air) and I can’t get unbearable of the sweet cinnamon glaze. These deserve a spot in your Christmas cookie recipe book.

Hero Ingredient: Pumpkin pie spice. Need I say more?

Pistachio Truffles

Why We Love It: Truffles are the simple, elegant, and tasty weightier friend of any jam-packed holiday schedule. I’m talking six ingredients and a few hands-free hours spent setting in the freezer. You can make these (vegan!) truffles with wool ease.

Hero Ingredient: It’s all well-nigh the toppings. Roll your truffles in coconut or toasted pistachios. Either option gives you a perfectly crunchy complement to your truffles’ linty center.

Buttered Rum Shortbread Cookies from Hummingbird High

Why We Love It: Four words sealed the deal for me on these holiday cookies: marbled buttered rum glaze. I’m sure you had the idea when you took in that picture, but these cookies aren’t just aesthetic. With a cup of butter in the dough itself (these are shortbread, without all) plus four tablespoons in the glaze, these are sure to be a favorite amongst all your cookie testers. As far as the weightier Christmas cookie recipes, this one features a relatively short ingredients list—making the journey from mixing trencher to mouth all the increasingly streamlined.

Hero Ingredient: It’s a toss-up between the butter and the rum. Paired together, they’re unstoppable.

Soft Gingerbread Latte Cookies with Brown Butter Icing from Half Baked Harvest

Why We Love It: Tieghan Gerard (the sultry genius overdue Half Baked Harvest) has a knack for ensuring that everything emerging from her kitchen is a succulent delight. But these gingerbread latte cookies? They’re my wool fave. I love the spicy-sweet savor they have going on, plus the soft and chewy texture makes them all the increasingly comforting. And with that brown butter icing to boot, these holiday cookies are in a category unto themselves.

Hero Ingredient: Espresso powder is key for giving these cookies’ their distinguished latte flavor.

Dreamy Soft Vegan Coconut Meltaway Cookies from Sincerely Tori

Why We Love It: Whether you’re a year-round fan of coconut or just require a bit of its tropical savor in the sufferer of winter, you can count on these cookies to satisfy you when a Piña Colada starving hits. With a soft shortbread wiring and a coconut savor that doesn’t taste strained or overwhelming, you’ve got everything you need to win at the game of holiday baking.

Hero Ingredient: Coconut oil, coconut cream, and coconut pericope make these cookies a true holiday delight. Not much increasingly needs to be said.

Vegan & Grain-Free Ginger Molasses Softies from The First Mess

Why We Love It: For anyone who’s vegan or gluten-free but still wants to enjoy the cookie season, here’s the dough you need to whip up. If you thought paleo ginger cookies sounded increasingly like a paradox than a succulent reality, get ready for these appropriately-named treats to wrack-up your mind.

Hero Ingredient: Dates are the secret to making these cookies self-ruling of refined sweeteners while still tasting like a treat. Honestly too, considering the dough isn’t saturated with sugar, the other ingredients are given the opportunity to let their flavors shine.

White Christmas Sugar Cookies from Julie Blanner

Why We Love It: Hot take: “White Christmas” was unquestionably written well-nigh these cookies. I’ve been dreaming well-nigh their simple and incredibly satisfying taste since I had them this time last year. A sort of sugar cookie-shortbread hybrid, these combine the weightier of everything you could overly want in your cookie.

Hero Ingredient: If you’ve overly wondered why your favorite cookie recipes undeniability for surf of tartar, here’s your answer: Surf of tartar acts as a leavening wage-earner and helps alimony the sugar in your cookies from crystallizing, so they’ll torch evenly and be devoured by everyone.

Eggnog Snickerdoodles from So Much Food

Why We Love It: Every holiday party seems to involve a debate over whether eggnog is succulent or… not. While I’m in the zany that loves sipping on a cup come December 1st (or, admittedly, earlier), I know it’s not for everyone. What is? These cookies. Mimicking the savor of eggnog (nutmeg! rum!) and rolled in a cinnamon-sugar mixture, there’s really no treatise that these cookies are downright delicious.

Hero Ingredient: 1/3 cup of eggnog gets widow to the cookie dough, just to be sure these taste like the real deal.

Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies from Hummingbird Thyme

Why We Love It: There’s nothing that evokes the essence of Christmas increasingly than the scent of ginger wafting through the air. Sinking my teeth into one of these streusel-topped cookies is velvety kicks at its best.

Hero Ingredient: Crystallized ginger bumps up the heat while moreover providing a little uneaten texture to these once deliciously-soft cookies.

Soft and Chewy White Chocolate Cranberry Walnut Cookies from Superiority of Thyme

Why We Love It: When white chocolate meets cranberries, the result is pure cookie magic. Adding walnuts into the mix offers just unbearable crunch while moreover providing a bit of nuttiness that’s welcome in any box of holiday cookies.

Hero Ingredient: Why the spare egg yolk, you may ask? Including an uneaten egg yolk creates a fudgier cookie. Dense, tender, and rich—a roundup of the weightier adjectives you can socialize with a cookie.

Slice-And-Bake Chocolate Tweedle Cookies from Hummingbird High

Why We Love It: This recipe requires a little widow context to understand the full telescopic of its Christmas cookie superiority. Full title? Any Time You Need ‘Em Slice-And-Bake Chocolate Tweedle Cookies. Considering here’s the thing: I unchangingly need cookies, and I unchangingly need cookies misogynist to torch at the ready. If that’s true for you too, make these.

Hero Ingredient: Bittersweet chocolate, you can really do no wrong.

The Santa Clause Cookies from Half-Baked Harvest

Why We Love It: Tieghan Gerard set out on a mission to make sugar cookies that taste good, and honestly, that can be a bit harder than it might initially sound. She’s unmistakably succeeded with this recipe. The ingredients list features hazelnut liqueur, lots of vanilla, and brown sugar to requite a ramified savor and melt-in-your-mouth bite.

Hero Ingredient: Keep the linty vanilla stone glaze coming, please.

Easy Vegan Macaroons from Minimalist Baker

Why We Love It: These macaroons don’t disappoint. I love any and every Minimalist Baker recipe for their worthiness to combine just a few ingredients and create a result that captures everything I could overly want in something sweet. 

Hero Ingredient: Let me introduce you to the magic of aquafaba. If you’re unfamiliar with the go-to vegan ingredient, know that you’ll soon start saving every last waif from your can of chickpeas. An wondrous egg replacement, it beautifully binds the ingredients here for the chewiest cookie of your life.

Mexican Wedding Cookies from Love & Lemons

Why We Love It: In my household, these are a Christmas cookie classic. I love that they simultaneously melt and crunch in your mouth, giving off their signature puff of powdered sugar. For me, these replay the holiday season. Not just considering they squint like snow themselves, but considering every zest is a study in edible comfort.

Hero Ingredient: Almond pericope deserves its spot in the sun. It’s fruity, nutty, and oh-so delish. I consider it an essential in every pantry.

Chocolate Cherry Almond Biscotti from My Sultry Addiction

Why We Love It: The only way to modernize upon a morning cup of coffee is by sipping your mash slantingly a crispy, crunchy slice of biscotti. The only way to modernize upon biscotti? A hearty handful of zestless tart cherries and chocolate fries mixed into the dough. 

Hero Ingredient: It’s increasingly a fact than an opinion: Every biscotti gets largest with chopped almonds.

Salted Caramel Turtle Thumbprint Cookies from Cooking Classy

Why We Love It: ‘Tis the season for thumbprints of all sorts. While some recipes opt for the archetype jam filling, these get a bit increasingly indulgent with a salted caramel center. Trust me, they might squint fancy, but the preparation really couldn’t be simpler.

Hero Ingredient: Is there a increasingly perfect pairing of flavors than salted caramel? While it’s a toss-up between the two for who gets to be named this recipe’s standout ingredient, I’m happy to settle on giving the combination the trophy. 

Chocolate-Dipped Well-done Peanut Butter Cookies from Joy the Baker

Why We Love It: These cookies’ archetype cross-hatched pattern lets you know immediately that you’re well-nigh to zest into peanut velvety goodness. What’s unexpected though, but nonetheless easy to embrace, is the dip they take in a trencher of melted chocolate. Golden and unremittingly comforting, as peanut butter cookies should unchangingly be.

Hero Ingredient: A good peanut butter is unchangingly an essential part of any peanut butter cookie. I’m not opposed to choosing one that’s made with slightly salted and roasted peanuts for an widow depth of flavor.

Cranberry Kicks Cookies from Gimme Some Oven

Why We Love It: Inspired by the favorite Starbucks pastry, these cookies brilliantly tousle tart and sweet. While unmistakably a dessert, I definitely wouldn’t consider them out of place slantingly my morning beverage. Breakfast is served.

Hero Ingredient: The frosting’s surf cheese wiring gives just the right value of tang, making it so you can have two (or more) without getting a sugar-induced headache.

Autumn Vitreous from Adventures in Cooking

Why We Love It: This vitreous puts the weightier parts of your favorite granola front and part-way while tightness them with honey for sweetness and an irresistible crunch. With almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, and plenty increasingly wholesome ingredients, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to consider this vitreous a relatively-healthy indulgence.

Hero Ingredient: Pumpkin seeds not only add texture but moreover bring along a little bit of festive verisimilitude that’s eye-catching and elegant.

Chocolate Swirled Meringue Cookies from Sally’s Sultry Addiction

Why We Love It: The presentation of these cookies is everything. Melted chocolate is mixed into a meringue base, creating a stunning swirl of woebegone and white. And can we talk well-nigh those cute Christmas sprinkles?

Hero Ingredient: You might be wondering well-nigh the surf of tartar—I was, too. Turns out, they help your egg whites hold onto air, keeping these meringues soft, crispy, and sky-high

Olive Oil & Sea Salt Pixie Cookies from Butterlust

Why We Love It: All the deliciousness of your favorite pixie in the form of a cookie? This recipe delivers. They’re unique in their rich and ramified flavor, and they’re all the proof you need that the limit for chocolatey goodness doesn’t exist.

Hero Ingredient: Hesitant to use olive oil in your baking? These cookies are your invitation to swoop in. Instead of stuff savory, the cookies retain their fudgy, chocolatey sweetness. Plus, opting for olive oil instead of butter ensures your cookies will stay moist for days. Just make sure you’re using high-quality olive oil and skip anything you wouldn’t want to taste in your cookie.

Snowballs from In the Little Red House

Why We Love It: Nope, these are not the Hostess Snoballs found next to the register at many gas station convenience stores. Instead, these offer a velvety zest with a satisfying dusting of snow-white powdered sugar. The recipe has it right—these truly are Santa’s favorite cookies.

Hero Ingredient: Again, they’re not snowballs without the snow. A dip in powdered sugar makes that happen.

French Butter Cookies from Owl Baking

Why We Love It: In France, these cookies are traditionally known as sablés. They’re a round shortbread cookie that while sounding simple is nothing short of revelatory. If you’ve unchangingly wanted to try your hand at French sultry but are intimidated by the thought of pastry, these cookies are an easy way to get started.

Hero Ingredient: If you can find a vanilla bean, amazing. If not, you can still capture these cookies’ scrutinizingly caramelly savor with vanilla stone paste. In a pinch, vanilla pericope can work as well.

Gingerbread Donut Cookies from Studio DIY

Why We Love It: These are just well-nigh the cutest cookies I’ve overly seen. If you need a unravel from the many expected gingerbread men that make their visitation virtually this time of year, here’s a quick solve. 

Hero Ingredient: All the weightier things are inspired by doughnuts. Sure, they’d still squint like the breakfast favorite without the sprinkles, but do you really want to pass up the opportunity for a little widow pizzazz? Answer: You definitely don’t. 

Swiss Walnut Christmas Cookies from Eat, Little Bird

Why We Love It: Fun fact: Läckerli, the Swiss name for these biscuits, comes from the German word lecker, which translates to “delicious.” And it totally makes sense—hazelnuts and walnuts are blitzed in the supplies processor and create a sticky dough when mixed with the sugar and egg whites. Drizzling a little glaze on top never hurt anyone.

Hero Ingredient: The frosting is flavored with a tiny bit of Kirsch for a pronounced cherry savor that adds just unbearable sweetness to these otherwise wholesome cookies.

This post was originally published on December 1, 2020, and has since been updated.