Easy Christmas Cookies

This Christmas Cookies recipe is delicious and such fun. Make them yourself or with your children for festive fabulousness. I usually make half the batch myself and then leave the other for my children to cut out and decorate with as much Christmas bling as they can shake a candy cane at.

I have fallen completely in love with these cuties and I'm not the only one.  These Christmas Cookies have gone down an absolute storm.

They are from the same shortbread recipe as my Easy Shortbread Cookies and they are seriously good. Crisp, buttery and short they are divine and horribly moreish.

I obviously colour them green here and cut them out into christmas tree shapes before baking them and finally decorating in a classic tinsel and baubles vibe. It really is an easy recipe and you can ramp up the technical level of decorating to suit how clever or useless you are.

I am particularly ham fisted so have kept it simple here even using pre made shop bought writing icing for the tinsel and picking out the red balls from a christmas sprinkles set. No fancy pants decorating here. I really am rubbish.

Christmas Cookies Recipe

STEP 1 - Mixing the Christmas Cookies dough.

The ingredients are incredibly simple. Just flour, sugar, butter and green food gel. Mix the lot together and it really is as simple as that.

I usually use my free standing mixer but a large food processor works well too.

Whack the lot in there and keep mixing until the dough starts to clump together.

Keep going for about 10 seconds after that. After mixing it becomes a green dough.

Add more green gel to achieve the right colour. I do recommend the gel colouring. it is much more powerful.

STEP 2 -Rolling and cutting out the dough. 

I use a bit of icing sugar on the work surface to stop the dough sticking when I roll it out.

I roll it out to about 0.75 cm thickness all over. I then cut out the christmas tree shapes.

I put them on a lined flat baking sheet. I use a reusable silicon liner.

I chill in the fridge for half an hour.

These make about 30 cookies.

I sometimes make half of the batch and freeze the other if I feel that I would struggle to munch my way through so many.

Or of course you could just halve the ingredients.

STEP 3 - Baking the cookies.

Have the oven preheated to 190 C/375 F/Gas Mark 5 and bake thhe cookies for about 10/12 minutes.

You are looking for crisp edges and a small amount of colouring.

Too much and the trees lose their green colour and not enough and the cookies will be too soft.

Move to a wire rack after 5 minutes to completely cool.

STEP 5 - Decorating the Christmas Cookies

I used shop bought pre mixed writing icing from my supermarket. The kind that you can just squeeze straight from the packet. They come with little screw on plastic nozzles.

Make sure they are warm enough, room temperature at least.

If you want to make your own then here is a homemade icing recipe. I would use half of the recipe.

I pipe on tinsel and then gently press in red baubles and a little star on the top. I use christmas sprinkles for this again bought from my local supermarket.

Let the kids fill their christmas decorating boots.

Christmas Cookie Tips

• To make the cookies gluten free simply substitute the plain flour for gluten free . Ensure your sprinkles and icing  are gluten free too.
• Freeze the cookies cut out but raw. I freeze them for an hour singularly before placing them in a freezer bag for up to 3 months. Bake from frozen for an extra 5 minutes or so. A great idea to get ahead.
• Don't let the butter be too warm when mixing otherwise the dough will lose it's shape when baked. You don't want the butter to be too soft.
• Make sure the edges are slightly crisp to get the perfect texture for your cookie.
• If the cookies spread a little then use a knife to carefully sharpen up the edges.
• If you want to make your own icing see here.
• Store in a airtight container for up to 5 days.

If you like this Christmas recipe then you may like these

• Sticky Ginger Cake
• Slow Cooker Hot Chocolate
• Slow Cooker White Hot Chocolate
• Christmas Pavlova Wreath
• Cinnamon Bundt Cake
• Cinnamon Rolls
• Puff Pastry Chocolate Christmas Tree
• Easy Christmas Cake

Do let me know how you got on in the comments below. I do love a good old hairy chin wag.