‘Tis the season for finals cramming, stressing over buying gifts, and some of the best traditions, baking Christmas cookies. Everyone in my family has different tastes, so we do our best for the cookie selection to be well-rounded. Some of the recipes have been passed down from my mom’s grandmother–though most tend to be from Pinterest. My favorite will always be the tried and true sugar cookie, but we always have fun trying out new recipes. From my family to yours, here are some favorites that you can try this holiday season!
These lemon cookies are delicious and so easy to make! This recipe uses only four ingredients, one being a lemon cake mix, so it would be hard to mess it up. Once the batter is mixed up, each cookie is rolled in powdered sugar to give it the “crinkle” effect.
My mom used to make this all the time when I was younger, and it was always a hit when family would come over. The base of this is saltine crackers, chocolate bars, and caramel sauce, but it can be personalized with nuts, sprinkles, or any other toppings you’d like.
If you couldn’t tell, my family loves the simple and few-ingredient recipes. This is arguably as simple as it gets with only three ingredients and no baking. We tend to make a few batches of these because of how quickly they get eaten. While these only require three ingredients, adding food coloring to color the chocolates or sprinkles to decorate adds the perfect personal touch!
4. Pizzelle
Taking a break from the simple and easy recipes, these pizzelles are my mom’s favorite because her grandmother used to make them for her family. These also tend to be the ones we mess up the most, but we’re planning on redeeming ourselves this year. Maybe you could have more luck this year than we typically do!
Another easy recipe with few ingredients, this fudge is gone within the day that we bake it. In the past, we have also made vanilla and chocolate fudge to compliment this. Pro Tip: Fudge will taste better when left at room temperature, as refrigerating it can make the consistency too firm.
Every December, my mom will dig through the cabinets to find the Christmas-cookie holy grail, a dusty brown binder completely filled with recipes for all types of cookies and sweet treats. We spend hours pouring over each recipe, taking time to decide which one’s we’ll bake this year, though we tend to overestimate how much we can realistically do. After talking with my mom, she wanted to start the tradition of making cookies with our family since she didn’t have those memories with her mom. Looking back on past Christmases, the afternoons spent baking with her have always been the most memorable and ones that I am most thankful for.
Being away at college has made me appreciate this family tradition of baking cookies and the intentional time spent with my family even more. When I’m worrying over due dates and final projects, I know that it’s almost time for the yearly cookie baking. Of course, it isn’t the holiday season at our house without messing up one of the recipes. My mom will never let me forget when I turned our stand mixer to the highest setting with all of the dry ingredients in it… Needless to say, there was powdered sugar everywhere. Undercooked, burnt, or just right, baking cookies is always the most magical time of the year for me.