Christmas Cookie Recipes
7 recipes with real times, yields, and make-ahead advice.
- Recipes
- 7
- Make-ahead notes
- Freezer
Christmas baking goes wrong for one of two reasons: taking on more recipes than the calendar allows, or leaving everything until the week it has to be eaten. Both are fixable. Most of what follows freezes, and the doughs freeze better than the baked cookies do.
Every recipe below is on this site in full, with quantities and timings. Start with the easy ones if you're baking with children — they're the ones where a wobbly result still tastes right.
Start Here
The three most forgiving recipes in the collection.
Classic Chocolate Truffles
Luxuriously smooth, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate truffles made with just three base ingredients. These elegant confections are surprisingly easy to make and perfect for holiday gift-giving. Customize with endless flavor variations from peppermint to champagne.
3 hours · makes 36
easyClassic Christmas Fudge
Smooth, rich, and melt-in-your-mouth chocolate fudge made with just a handful of pantry ingredients. This foolproof recipe uses sweetened condensed milk for a creamy, perfectly set fudge every single time. A beloved Christmas tradition that is wonderful for gifting.
2 hours 15 minutes · makes 36
easyClassic Christmas Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing
Buttery, soft sugar cookies cut into festive holiday shapes and decorated with smooth royal icing. A beloved Christmas tradition that's perfect for cookie exchanges, gifting, and decorating with family.
2 hours 30 minutes · makes 36
Cookies
The classics, in alphabetical order.
| Recipe | Total time | Makes | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Classic Christmas Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing | 2 hours 30 minutes | 36 | easy |
| Gingerbread Cookies | 2 hours | 24 | easy |
Candy & Confections
What goes in the tin alongside the cookies.
| Recipe | Total time | Makes | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Classic Chocolate Truffles | 3 hours | 36 | easy |
| Classic Christmas Fudge | 2 hours 15 minutes | 36 | easy |
| English Butter Toffee | 1 hour 30 minutes | 48 | medium |
| Peppermint Bark | 1 hour 25 minutes | 24 | easy |
| Soft Salted Caramels | 3 hours | 64 | medium |
A Baking Plan That Actually Works
Pick three recipes, not eight. Three gives a tin enough variety to look generous, and it is a number you can finish in two sessions rather than resenting by the third weekend of December.
Make the doughs first — all three in one afternoon — and freeze them in logs or discs. Baking day then becomes slice-and-bake rather than mix-chill-roll-cut-bake, and you can do it in an evening. Decorating is the third session, and the only one worth involving children in, because it's the part where mistakes don't ruin anything.
What Travels Well as a Gift
Sturdy cookies and set confections survive being carried; anything soft-centred or freshly iced does not. Gingerbread, shortbread, biscotti, fudge, and bark all travel. Pack them in a tin with parchment between layers, and add a printable gift tag — the tags sheet has eight per page.
Storage at a Glance
- Dough, frozen: up to 3 months — the best thing you can do in November
- Baked, frozen: about 1 month, undecorated
- Airtight tin, room temperature: roughly 1 week for most cookies
- Fudge and bark: 2–3 weeks in a cool place, not the fridge
- Anything iced: let the icing set completely before stacking, or it welds together
Baking for the main event too? The Christmas dinner menu has two full menus with an hour-by-hour timeline, and the free meal planner has space to schedule the oven around your baking.
Christmas recipes, weekly
Make-ahead baking, dinner timings, and recipes worth adding to the tin.
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