Festive, fun and easy to make – these chocolate sugar cookies with a holiday twist are definitely a crowd pleaser. Perfect on their own (some people say they have a brownie-like taste), the holiday cookie cutter shapes are adorable and don’t need any decoration, but, pair with vanilla royal icing, sprinkles, or melted chocolate for extra decadence.
Jump to RecipeThe Christmas colored “chocolate chips” are the Hershey’s Chipits Holiday Shapes Baking Chip.
If you can’t find them, you could substitute other holiday themed Christmas chips or make the dough without them.
I’m going to get right to the recipe because Christmas day is tomorrow, but have a few quick notes below.
Use the best quality ingredients you can. The cocoa powder will make a big difference in the final taste of your cookies.
These tips on how to prevent cookies from spreading are important to know.
Happy baking and eating!
xo,
Marian
p.s. Hope you don’t mind the usual zillions of photos.
Holiday Chocolate Sugar Cookie Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups salted butter
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 3 tsp vanilla extract
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups cocoa powder
- 2 cups holiday chocolate chips
Instructions
- Cream the butter and sugar together in the bowl of an electric mixer on low to medium speed (Use a paddle attachment). Mix until thoroughly incorporated – for about one minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a plastic spatula and mix again for a few seconds more. Over mixing the butter and sugar in this step will cause too much air to be incorporated into the dough. If you’d like a light and fluffy cookie, that’s ideal, however the dough will spread more during baking; not ideal if you’d like the cookie to hold its shape.
- Add eggs slowly and mix. Scrape down the bowl with your spatula at least once and mix again.
- Add liquid vanilla extract. Stir briefly.
- Sift your dry ingredients together. (Flour, cocoa powder).
- Add all of the flour mixture to the bowl. Place a large tea towel or two small tea towels between the edge of the bowl and the electric mixer so that the flour won’t escape. Mix on low speed for 3o seconds. Remove the tea towel and add the holiday chocolate chips. Observe the dough mixing; when it clumps around the paddle attachment it’s ready. It’s also important at this stage not to over mix the dough.
- Roll the dough out between 2 large pieces of parchment paper. Place on a baking sheet and into the fridge for a minimum of 1 hour.
- Roll out the dough further if you need to, and cut out cookie shapes. Place on parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Re-roll scraps and repeat.
- Put cookie dough shapes back into the fridge for 10 minutes to 1 hour to chill again. They will then hold their shape better when baked.
- Preheat your oven to 350°F or 176°C.
- Bake cookies for 8-12 minutes or until the center of the cookie no longer looks wet. The baking time will depend on the size of your cookie.
- Let cookies cool to room temperature and decorate!
Sara says
These look fantastic. I love the zillions of photos and look forward to them! thank Thank you for sharing.
marian says
Yay! I’m glad you don’t mind all the photos! ☺️
Hannah Garnier says
This is an amazing recipe! I love it. No spread and so yummy!
Marian says
Thanks Hannah! I’m glad you like it!