My Top 8 Christmas Cookie Recipes for 2023
My Top 8 Christmas Cookie Recipes for 2023
My 8 favorite recipes for your cookie exchange or to give as gifts this holiday baking season.
Who doesn’t love it when a neighbor shows up with a tin of homemade cookies during the holidays. Even though I try so hard to swear off sweets, I have to admit, I am so excited at the idea of someone baking trays of cookies to share. This Christmas I plan to bake up these recipes for friends, plus a few recipes form some of my favorite food websites.
If you do not have time to bake, consider reaching out to a local bakery and creating a tin of your own. Add cookies, muffins, pasties or breads. Boxes and tins can be found at Home Goods, TJ Maxx, World Market, Michael’s, and other gift shops. Wrap in cello wrap and tie with red and white kitchen twine or an extravagant silk bow.
I found beautiful gold rectangular tins HERE.
Be creative. Think outside the box- ha ha.
AND- Look for my holiday foodie gift guide later this week.
1. Chewy Cocoa Molasses Cookies
These easy to make cookies are flavored with four spices and molasses for that Christmas flavor you are craving right now. Rolled in sugar and baked to a chewy bite, these mouth watering cookies are perfect for holiday gifting. Click HERE for the recipe.
2. Lemon Coconut Wedding Cookies
A classic holiday pairing- citrus and coconut. Whether you prefer ambrosia or in a cookie- these light as a feather confections dusted with confectioner’s sugar look beautiful in a glass jar or on a plate with a grown up glass of “milk”, aka White Russian . Recipe is HERE.
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3. Salted Brown Butter Pecan Cookies
Worth the bit of effort of browning the butter. Once you do this step, you may never bake cookies any other way. Smokey, nutty and full of buttery goodness. My son- in law, Michael, declared this was the best cookie he had ever eaten. Click HERE for buttery yumminess.
4. Gingerbread with Royal Icing
It wouldn’t be a complete holiday cookie list without a gingerbread recipe. I have made this recipe dozens of times and it never lets me down. One year, I decorated our entire tree with gingerbread ornaments made with this recipe. * Note- do not hang the ornaments where animals can reach them. My favorite use is making place cards for my Christmas table with these cookies. Cut them into any shape you like and be creative. Click HERE for the spicy recipe.
5. Smoke Sea Salt and Dark Chocolate Crackers
If you do not like to bake- this recipe is for you. Using packages of saltine crackers, these flakey, salty sweet shards make a great gift. this super simple recipe requires no mixing. Make a double recipe, you will definitely want a batch for yourself. Click HERE for my version of “Christmas Crack”.
6. Bourbon Oatmeal Cowboy Cookies
Dark chocolate, oats, bourbon soaked raisins and coconut. Who’s with me? I tested this recipe over and over to make sure this would be your go to favorite this year. And it is cowboy approved by the wranglers at the Bar W Ranch next door to us. This cookie may put a little hair on your chest it has so much liquor in it. Yes Haw! Click HERE for the recipe.
7. Oatmeal Pecan Scotchies
Let’s keep the oatmeal cookie train going with these classic scotchies. I adore the pumpkin, butterscotch and spice flavors. Just because fall is over, doesn’t mean we have to give up our PSL anytime soon. You know you bought too much canned pumpkin this year, and here is the perfect way to use it all up. Click HERE for the scrumptious recipe.
Piles of plump pumpkins
8. Buttery Bourbon Pecan Bars
While not really a ‘cookie”, I love to pack a cookie gift box with a bar, brownie or blondie type treat. They are portable, sticky, nutty and so fantastic. Leave a copy of the recipe in the cookie tin, because I promise you, everyone will want this recipe. Click HERE for pecan perfection.
