The Best Homemade Christmas Cookie Recipe Ever

I can look back now and see with great clarity the times that I baked Christmas cookies. Everyone would be sitting around the table. Each of us would grab a big hunk of dough from the pan and flatten it, and then we would find our favorite cookie cutters and proceed to make dozens and dozens of cookies.

After several hours of cookie-cutting, we would break for lunch. Afterward, everyone would reconvene in the kitchen for round two-decorating. We would pull out the big bins full of sprinkles, sprays, frosting tubes, etc. Of course, there was also a large portion of homemade frosting to go along with the other decorations.

We would then spend a few hours working to decorate the Christmas cookies before we all collapsed with exhaustion. There were so many cookies that we had to start boxing up the first ones just to have a place to put the last of them!

The following recipe is one that my great-grandmother used back when she made her own cookies, and I plan to teach this to my own children one day.

Old-Fashioned Homemade Christmas Cookie Recipe

2.25 cups self-rising flour

.75 cups sugar

1 cup crisco (I use the Crisco sticks that look like sticks of butter)

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and let everyone dig in and get started!

I'm not 100% sure as to how many cookies this will make. I do know that we always made about six times this recipe to have enough for a dozen people to make lots and lots of cookies.

Bake at 375 for 10-15 min on an ungreased cookie sheet until golden brown. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow to cool before frosting them.

Homemade Frosting Recipe

Some people at the "cookie parties" preferred frosting or decorating spray from a can, but the homemade frosting was always my favorite.

Mix powdered sugar, a tiny bit of milk, and whatever food coloring you want to use (red and green for Christmas, of course!). You want the frosting to be thick, or it won't stick to the cookies. For fine work, a toothpick is fine for applying the frosting. For rougher work, a butter knife can be used effectively.

Something to Remember

Another great benefit of this type of activity is that anyone can be involved. I have helped a 65-year old woman and a 4-year old boy with their cookies. I don't know which one of them enjoyed the process more, but the child seemed to be eating quite a bit of frosting. Kids love to create things, and allowing them to cut and decorate their own Christmas cookie is a great way to get them to express their creativity. Adults will also enjoy the child-like feeling they get when they create and bite into one of their own creations.

The Christmas cookie recipe, while simple, is not the most important part of this Christmas celebration. The most important part is the time spent laughing, playing, and creating memories that will last a lifetime. We always had guests come and help us with the cookies, and they always left our home happy and loaded down with dozens of cookies. Who knows, maybe they were full of the Christmas spirit, or maybe it was just the sugar rush? Whatever the reason, this was not only a recipe for sweets; it was a recipe for fun.