These soft and chewy Christmas sugar cookies are made with festive red and green sprinkles for easy, kid-friendly Christmas cookies! Adapted from my favorite chewy sugar cookies, these have a peppermint cookie base topped with Christmas sprinkles!
Why You'll Love These Cookies!
Texture – These Christmas sugar cookies are soft, chewy and have that perfect crispy edge. Best of all, they keep their texture long after they come out of the oven!
Effortless – These cookies are SO easy to make. All you do is mix, scoop, chill, and bake.
Longevity – Most cookies are best eaten when fresh from the oven, but these Christmas sprinkle cookies are delicious no matter when you serve them. Because of how soft and buttery they are, they keep that perfect chewy texture for up to a week!
You might also like these frosted eggnog cookies or these brown butter stamp cookies.
Ingredient Notes
You only need a few simple ingredients to make these Christmas sugar cookies with festive sprinkles!
Peppermint Extract - You can find peppermint extract next to the vanilla at the grocery store or online! Just note that peppermint extract is very strong, so you only need a little bit for great peppermint flavor!
Christmas Sprinkles - What makes these peppermint sugar cookies so fun is the festive red and green sprinkles! I like to do several different types of sprinkles and sanding sugar, but you can just choose one if you prefer.
The complete list of ingredients and amounts is located in the recipe card below.
How to Make Sugar Cookies
Using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, or hand mixer, cream the room temperature butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar until smooth and creamy.
Add in the egg, vanilla extract, and peppermint extract and beat until light, fluffy, and pale in color. This should take 2-4 minutes which seems like a long time, but you'll see a huge difference in the texture afterwards.
Add in the flour, baking soda, and salt and mix until thoroughly combined. The dough will be soft.
If desired, scoop about ⅓ of the dough into a separate bowl and mix in some red and green jimmies.
Then using a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop to portion the dough, roll into small balls. For the other two types of dough, dip the tops in red/green sparkling sugar and non-pareils [or whatever other sprinkles you want].
Cover the dough balls and chill in the fridge for 2 hours.
While the dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Place dough balls at least 2-3 inches apart on the baking sheet (they will spread, I usually only do 6 cookies on a half sheet pan). Place the rest of the cookie dough balls back in the fridge while the first batch cooks.
Bake at 350°F for 8-10 minutes or until the edges are fully set but the centers are still soft.
Remove the Christmas sugar cookies from the oven and let rest on the baking sheet for 2-3 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.
Tips for Perfect Cookies
Measure your flour correctly! It's most accurate to use a kitchen scale, but if you're measuring by volume you want to spoon and level! Fluff up the flour a bit with a spoon, and then spoon flour into the measuring cup. Once it's overflowing, use the back of a knife to level it off. Don't ever pack flour into the measuring cup or you'll end up with way too much! Improperly measured flour can lead to dry, crumbly cookies that don't spread.
Make sure your oven is the proper temperature! Use an oven thermometer to make sure your oven is exactly 350°F. If the oven is too cold, the cookies will spread too much and if it's too hot they centers won't bake all the way through. For example, my oven is about 20 degrees off. So I have to set the oven to 370°F in order to get it to bake at 350°F.
Use a lightweight, light colored baking sheet for best results! Believe it or not, a lighter pan makes the cookies bake more slowly than a dark pan, which helps keep them from spreading too much. My favorite pans for baking cookies are:
You also want to use either parchment paper or silicone mats on your cookie sheet to help keep the cookies from spreading.
Bake the cookies one sheet at a time, on the center rack. This will ensure all your cookies cook evenly and the bottoms don't burn. Then let the cookie sheet cool completely between batches. This ensures the cookies cook evenly and don't spread too much by being put on a hot pan.
Always under-bake the cookies! If you slightly under-bake the cookies (so the centers are still soft when you remove them from the oven), they'll stay soft and chewy for days!
Do the cookie scoot! In order to get perfectly round cookies, use a large cookie cutter to gently scoot them around as soon as they come out of the oven!
Recipe FAQ's
Store the baked peppermint sugar cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days. You can also store the dough in the fridge for up to a week and bake a few cookies at a time, as desired.
Chilling the sugar cookie dough allows the flour to hydrate a bit and ensures the butter is super cold. This keeps your cookies from spreading too much and completely flattening out.
Tips for Success!
For best results I always recommend using weight measurements (especially when baking) because it's the most accurate. Kitchen scales are super affordable and also reduce the number of dishes you have to do! However, all my recipes also include US customary measurements for convince. Use this chart to convert measurements for common ingredients!
Substitutions: In all my recipes, I've included substitutions that I know will work, but I cannot guarantee results if you substitute ingredients that I have not recommended. [For example, granulated sugar and honey are indeed both sweeteners but they have very different properties so they can not always be swapped 1:1. Using honey in a cookie recipe that calls for granulated sugar will yield a giant mess.] In the recipe card you'll find links to the specific ingredients/brands that I use.
A note on salt: I almost exclusively use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt because it's the best all-purpose salt for cooking and baking. If you're not using kosher salt, consult this handy guide for a conversion chart! When in doubt, if you're using table salt just reduce the amount by half for baked goods. When cooking, I prefer to under-salt because you can always add more! If you've over-salted, adding a little bit of acid (like lemon juice) can help.
More Christmas Cookies!
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Recipe Card
Christmas Sugar Cookies with Sprinkles
Special Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- ¾ cup light brown sugar
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon peppermint extract, optional
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- Christmas sprinkles
Instructions
- Using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, or hand mixer, cream the room temperature butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar until smooth and creamy.
- Add in the egg, vanilla extract, and peppermint extract and beat until light, fluffy, and pale in color. This should take 2-4 minutes which seems like a long time, but you'll see a huge difference in the texture afterwards.
- Add in the flour, baking soda, and salt and mix until thoroughly combined. The dough will be soft.
- If desired, scoop about ⅓ of the dough into a separate bowl and mix in some red and green jimmies.
- Then using a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop to portion the dough, roll into small balls. For the other two types of dough, dip the tops in red/green sparkling sugar and non-pareils [or whatever other sprinkles you want].
- Cover the dough balls and chill in the fridge for 2 hours.
- While the dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Place dough balls at least 2-3 inches apart on the baking sheet (they will spread, I usually only do 6 cookies on a half sheet pan). Place the rest of the cookie dough balls back in the fridge while the first batch cooks.
- Bake at 350°F for 8-10 minutes or until the edges are fully set but the centers are still soft.
- Remove the Christmas sugar cookies from the oven and let rest on the baking sheet for 2-3 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.
Notes
Nutrition
The nutritional information on this website is only an estimate and is provided for convenience and as a courtesy only. The accuracy of the nutritional information for any recipe on this site is not guaranteed.
Josie says
These cookies are so soft and delicious and easy to make! Definitely a new go-to cookie