I love baking cookies year-round but when Christmas rolls around, I get excited about Christmas baking. I bring out the cookie cutters and make the best sugar cookies for the holidays. These are the sugar cookies that my kids help me bake as they are the cookies for Santa. They are also the sugar cookies that I bring to holiday cookie exchanges as everyone loves sugar cookie cutouts.
For the past couple of years, I have baked this classic sugar cookie recipe as this is a cookie recipe that has an easy-to-roll cookie dough. This sugar cookie recipe has a nice buttery flavor and tastes great even without frosting.
These cookies taste great with or without frosting
When I bake these sugar cookies for Santa, I frost them with cookie frosting, but they also taste great without frosting. I bring out all the Christmas cookie cutters and sprinkles. Then the fun begins! I let my kids frost the holiday cookies and sprinkle them with the color sprinkles. There is always the child who puts on way too much frosting and an overflow of Christmas sprinkles. One year Santa wrote in his letter that the cookies had too many red hot sprinkles on the cookies.
This is the time of year when this mom overlooks the mess of making Christmas cookies with the kids. They are only a little for a short time. So I don't mind having to sweep up all the cookie sprinkles from the floor. The Christmas memories are so worth having to mop a sticky floor. The best part of making Christmas cookies with my children is seeing them enjoy their cookie creation and placing the best decorated cookies on the plate for Santa. This year I am hoping that my granddaughter will be able to join in the fun of making Christmas cookies.
This year, I decided to try a new Christmas sugar cookie recipe, instead of baking my Holiday Pumpkin Pie Spiced Sugar Cookies. This sugar cookie recipe contains the usual sugar cookie ingredients like butter, flour, sugar, eggs, and pure vanilla extract but this cookie recipe also contains pure almond extract. I had never used almond extract in my holiday baking but it gives the cookies an amazing taste.
A sugar cookie recipe that has a sweet nutty flavor
Best Sugar Cookies are
+ Sweet
+ Buttery
+ Best for cookie cutters
+ Easy to roll
+ Make great gifts
+ Great for cookie exchanges
When I added the pure almond extract to the creamed butter and sugar in my mixer, the aroma of the extract was so good. The almond extract had a pleasant scent that I enjoyed. I thought that my Madagascar Bourbon pure vanilla extract had a wonderful scent but the pure almond extract had a stronger aroma. When it was time to roll the refrigerated sugar cookie dough, the almond scent was so delicious. I just wanted to smell it all day. I thought to myself that the pure almond extract would make a great body fragrance and that I should buy an almond essential to diffuse in my essential oil diffuser. The chilled cookie dough was so easy to roll and the almond oil scent made it the best-ever sugar cookie dough to roll out for the cookie cutters.
No need to frost them as you can bake them with sprinkles
I decided to take a bit of the sugar cookie dough and use it and make some Christmas cookies. Since I was not making cookies for Santa or a Christmas cookie exchange, I just used a couple of cookie cutters. I also decided to not frost these cookie shapes and instead, I used some colored Christmas cookie sprinkles. I had red and green colored sugar sprinkles that I sprinkled on the unbaked cookie dough shapes before I baked the cookies. I know that the next time I bake these sugar cookies, I will make my delicious lemon blackberry buttercream frosting.
Place the cookie sheets of unbaked cookies in the fridge for 15 minutes before baking
This sugar cookie recipe is now my favorite Christmas sugar cookie recipe. This is a sugar cookie recipe that has a sweet nutty flavor.
The best baking tip ~ place the baking sheets of unbaked sugar cookie shapes in the refrigerator for 15 minutes before baking them. This prevents the dough from spreading when baking. This baking hack is amazing and it prevents the cookie shapes from spreading into weird shapes.
If you are looking to cut out some carbs in your diet or need a cookie recipe that is low in sugar, then I recommend an amazing low-glycemic sugar substitute that has a taste similar to sugar and can be used in recipes with a 1:1 ratio. Lakanto is a sweetener that is made with monk fruit. Monk fruit is a keto-friendly sweetener that is 300 times sweeter than sugar. Monk fruit extract is rated a zero on the glycemic index and has zero calories and zero carbs so it won’t spike blood sugar diabetics can incorporate it into their diet more easily than sugar. I love using Lakanto in my chocolate chip cookie recipe as the taste is so similar to sugar that my family can not tell that I switched out the sugar for this monk fruit sweetener. This natural sweetener is a keto product. So it is a keto-friendly sweetener that is perfect for your keto recipes.
Check out some other favorite cookie recipes for the holidays
Holiday Pumpkin Pie Spiced Sugar Cookies
https://www.momknowsbest.net/2017/12/holiday-cinnamon-spiced-sugar-cookies.html
Lemon Frosted Rosemary Holiday Sugar Cookies
https://www.momknowsbest.net/2018/12/lemon-frosted-rosemary-holiday-sugar.html
Dairy-Free Soft Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
https://www.momknowsbest.net/2019/07/dairy-free-soft-pumpkin-chocolate-chip.html
Dairy-Free Rosemary Sugar Cookies
https://www.momknowsbest.net/2018/12/dairy-free-rosemary-sugar-cookies-made.html
The Best Christmas Sugar Cookie Recipe
Yield: 36 cookies
A sugar cookie recipe that has a sweet nutty flavor.
ingredients:
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1teaspoon Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Extract
- 1 teaspoon Nielsen-Massey Pure Almond Extract
- 3 cups flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- sprinkles or colored sugar
instructions:
How to cook The Best Christmas Sugar Cookie Recipe
- Cream the butter and sugar on medium speed in your electric mixer or cream by hand until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs, vanilla, and almond extracts. Beat until combined. Add the salt and the flour, beat until you have a smooth dough. If the dough is sticky, add more flour a tablespoon at a time until it does not stick to your fingers. Place the dough in the refrigerator for an hour or more.
- Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpat mats.
- Remove half of the cookie dough from the fridge and on a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Place some flour on your rolling pin to prevent it from sticking to the dough. Cut out desired shapes with lightly floured cookie cutters. Place the cookie dough shapes on the baking sheets.
- Place the baking sheets with the unbaked cookies in the fridge for about 15 minutes to chill. This will prevent the cookies from spreading and losing the shape while baking. If you are not going to frost the cookies, you can sprinkle the unbaked cookies with sprinkles or colored sugar.
- Preheat the oven at 375 F. Bake the cookies for 9-11 minutes or until the edges are just starting to brown. Remove the cookie sheets from the oven and let the cookies cool for 5 minutes before removing them.
Calories
110.55
110.55
Fat (grams)
5.51
5.51
Sat. Fat (grams)
3.29
3.29
Carbs (grams)
13.75
13.75
Fiber (grams)
0.28
0.28
Net carbs
13.47
13.47
Sugar (grams)
5.79
5.79
Protein (grams)
1.48
1.48
Sodium (milligrams)
13.00
13.00
Cholesterol (grams)
23.89
23.89