I’m sharing a baker’s dozen Christmas cookies that will solve your sweet tooth cravings. These cookies make a stunning, full-of-variety plate of cookies you can serve at any gathering.
Making Christmas Cookies
If you love to bake and decorate cookies, you can make them all yourself or with your kids or grandkids. It’s fun either way. Some folks start baking a couple of weeks before Christmas (or longer), making lots of different kinds of cookies. Some freeze well for as long as a month.
Cookies make great holiday gifts! If you have to ship them across the country, it’s best to choose the more solid cookies and get them in the mail early.
But what if you like a variety of cookies and you don’t want to bake lots of kinds yourself? How about a cookie exchange?
Host A Cookie Exchange
Have you considered hosting a cookie exchange? What’s that, you ask? It’s a party to swap already baked, ready-to-eat cookies (and recipes) with one another.
Ned ideas? This book has 35 delicious recipes form around the world or try one of the 33 cookie recipes I shared here on the blog.
Here’s how a baker’s dozen cookie exchange works:
- Have an informal party to exchange baked cookies and corresponding recipes with your friends. For a baker’s dozen party, choose 11 reliable friends who like to bake. To be clear, including you, there are 12 participants in this scenario.
- Everyone chooses one recipe to make and bake. Each prepares 13 dozen cookies using the one recipe they choose. That’s right, you make a dozen more cookies than the total number of participants.
- Each participant then packages one dozen cookies per box or plate, beautifully wrapped and nicely secured, making 13 individual packages. I suggest adding the cookie recipe to each package for easy recipe distribution.
- On the day of the party, everyone brings their 13 dozen individual packages of cookies to the party.
- Place one dozen of each kind of cookie on a table for everyone at the party to sample! Of course, that’s why you made the extra dozen.
- The remaining 12 dozen cookies are divided among the host and guests so that everyone goes home with 12 different kinds of cookies, a dozen each, to serve to their family and friends at their house or in the office during the holidays! Is that brilliant, or what?
How to exchange the cookie recipes
- Create a group text or email to exchange the recipes ahead of time. Gathering the recipes before the party assures that everyone will take home a dozen different kinds of cookies.
- If you prefer to keep the recipes secret until the event, the host can gather all the recipes and prepare a recipe book to distribute at the party or later. She could also alert people with duplicate recipes of the redundancy.
- Or participants can put a copy of their recipe in each package as they wrap them.
- Another suggestion is to have everyone bring 12 copies of the recipe to the party to hand out with the cookies.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that a cookie exchange does not require a dozen participants. Any number of people can enjoy exchanging cookies! Most cookie recipes make at least 24 cookies. Some make many more.
Christmas Cookie Pictures To Inspire You
Check out these yummy-looking cookies to get inspired. And make sure to bring out the Christmas dinnerware to complete the mood.
Lovely start-shaped cookies decorated for winter. Beautiful and delicious!
A little different from your usual Christmas cookies, these tree and heart shaped cookies are decorated with pastel colored icing.
Fun colored gingerbread cookies, perfect for decorating with the entire family. The adults will have just as much find and the kids showing off their cookie designing skills!
Christmas Cookies
These cookies are placed in order of beauty and deliciousness. All are amazing! I like to make several kinds of cookies to add to my dessert plate. And I want my plate to be exquisite.
These cookies are like a chocolate-covered cherry on top of a crunchy butter cookie. They look like they take AGES to make, but they are really quite simple. And everyone asks for the recipe! This cookie does NOT freeze well.
Three Layer Mint Brownies or Gluten Free Three Layer Mint Brownies. These two recipes are very similar, but the second one uses gluten free flour and a little more chocolate. I like the second one better. Both are three beautiful layers. Brownie on the bottom. Green frosting in the middle. Topped with melted chocolate. They are to die for. Must keep refrigerated. They freeze well.
Coconut Kiss Cookies are melt-in-the-mouth delicious, vegan, and gluten-free, almost as good as real kisses. There are three secrets to making these luscious coconut cookies, but they are not hard to make. I wouldn’t freeze them, but I’m pretty sure you can.
IMHO, these brown sugar sugar cookies are the best sugar cookies you will ever eat. They are fun to make, beautiful on a plate and so, so good! This rolled and cut-out cookie is easy and tasty.
Choose your cookie cutters, and have some fun making cookies. I like them frosted, but some people like them simply sprinkled with sugar. How do you like your sugar cookies? They freeze well.
Simple butter cookies you make with a cookie press. The kids will love making these with you. Make them different colors, or dip them in chocolate for a little pizzazz. They freeze well.
Who doesn’t love Nutella? Yummy chocolate hazelnut spread turned into a cookie? I’m in. These are amazing refrigerator cookies that you roll in plastic and refrigerate (you don’t have to wait too long!). Then slice and bake. Decorate with hazelnuts, sprinkles, or chocolate chips. Or frost them for an even prettier presentation. They freeze well.
As the name says…easy! These cookies are made in a pan and then cut into squares. And look how beautiful they are. They are like trail mix on top of a graham cracker crust. So amazing! I wouldn’t freeze them.
These pecan cookies rolled in powdered sugar are delicious. You do have to chew, though, because they have tiny bits of pecans in them. Crunchy, sweet, and melt-in-the-mouth. What’s better than that? I wouldn’t freeze them as I think they would dry out.
The best sugar cookie that you don’t have to cut out. These are SO easy. Mix, roll in balls, and squish with a sugared-bottom glass. Bake. They are amazing just like that. But make them beautiful for Christmas by dipping them in chocolate. They freeze well.
Cake-like gingerbread molasses cookies. Who doesn’t think of gingerbread cookies as Christmas? No rolling and cutting out is required for this recipe, however. They are a simple drop cookie. Frost them for added flavor. Everyone is sure to love them. You can even make them like moon pies for a little extra fun. They freeze well.
Super fun peanut butter and chocolate cookies are easy to make, even with little kids. And they love the name. Puppy Chow Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies make good snacks or gifts. No baking is involved! I wouldn’t freeze them.
Rocks spice cookies have been around forever. They are tasty spice cookies that look a little like rocks. Hence, the name. The recipe has been around since the late 19th or early 20th century.
Originally made with raisins, the recipe was developed because it makes a LOT, and the cookies keep very well. These are excellent cookies to ship as gifts because they hold together nicely and really smell and taste good. They freeze well.
These layered cookies take just a bit more work, but they are super good. And gorgeous. You make them in small muffin tins. The bottom layer is a cookie. Then a filling that involves cream cheese, pecans, and coconut. And the finished cookies are drizzled with chocolate. Mmmmm. So amazing. I wouldn’t freeze them.
Now you have a baker’s dozen cookies to choose from. Many freeze well, so you can make them in advance and freeze them for later. At our house, that’s what we need to do, or we eat them all before our guests arrive!
Kathy acquired the blog, Recipe Idea Shop in 2024. She was raised on a farm in Arkansas where having a big garden and good food to eat was the norm. She shares recipes for homemade comfort food and new trending dishes.
Kathy began her blogging journey in 2011 when she founded PetticoatJunktion.com, a home décor blog focused on repurposing and upcycling furniture, and thrift store finds.
