Best Christmas Cookies Ever – Easy Recipe
I baked these cookies 1 week ago and I can only tell you they are divine! Buttery, soft and crunchy at the same time, a dream!
I made 3 types of cookies, but you can make even more, all you need is imagination. I split the dough in 3 parts and I added vanilla, cardamom and orange extract. I ended up with Viennese whirls (without the butter layers), orange and chocolate cookies and white chocolate, cardamom and pistachio cookies. Absolutely divine! Santa will surely be happy with these cookies so go ahead and check the steps!
- 225 g butter (room temperature, it really needs to be soft)
- 2 Pcs eggs (room temperature)
- 0.5 tsp salt
- 360 g all-purpose flour
- 150 g sugar
- 50 g dark chocolate (or milk chocolate, you choose)
- 50 g white chocolate
- 0.5 tsp ground cardamom
- 1 tbsp chopped pistchios
- 0.5 tsp vanilla extract
- 0.5 tsp orange extract
- 2 tbsp jam of your choice
- Making the dough
Start by making the dough. It is very, very easy and it helps if you have a stand mixer like Kitchen Aid or so, because the dough will become even smoother. Start by mixing the butter and the sugar approximately 2 minutes until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs and keep on mixing for 30 seconds or until fully incorporated. Add the flour and salt, and beat everything until the flour is fully incorporated 30 seconds more or 1 minute. Do not overbeat the dough as this will develop the gluten and impact the consistency of our cookies.
- Divide the dough
Divide the dough into 3 equal parts and to one dough add vanilla, to the other orange extract and to the thord one add the cardamom powder. Mix everything well making sure you incorporate it all the way through.
- Piping the cookies
Piping the cookies can be a challenge if you don't have a start nozzle, I would recommend an open star nozzle like Wilton #4B (which I have home in Romania but not in Germany). The dough is pretty dense and a little bit hard for a piping bag so having a small nozzle like I had will be a challenge as you have to push a lot with your hands (if you wanna get some muscle go for it!), I just warned you. Or the hassle free option would be rolling the doughs into 3 equal cylinders, keep them in the fridge for 2-3 hours, then slice them and bake them.
If you go for the piping method, just use your imagination and pipe whatever shapes you want. You can make Christmas tree, pinwheels, pretzels, the possibilities are unlimited. Check my reel for inspiration.
- Baking the cookies
Bake the cookies for approximately 15 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius or until golden brown and let them cool on a rack.
- Decorating the cookies
Again, you can decorate them and pipe them as you like, you can really make a lot of types of cookies with this dough. This is just my version.
Melt the 2 types of chocolate over bain-marie, then take the cookies and dip half of them into the dark chocolate and the rest in white chocolate (make sure they are fully cooled when dipping). Place them on a baking sheet and place them in the fridge for 5-10 minutes until the chocolate is set). Decorate the white chocolate cookies with the chopped pistachios. Glue some cookies together with the jam as well. Enjoy with a hot cup of coffee/tea/milk!