Best Christmas Cookie Recipes 2021

With the festive season in full swing, there’s no better time to get creative in the kitchen! You don’t need a fancy Christmas cookie recipe to bake show-stopping treats – with our roundup of top Christmas cookie decorating ideas, you’re sure to impress whatever your skill level.

Wonderful Christmas wreath biscuits

These beautifully ornate miniature Christmas wreaths make perfect place settings for your festive feast! Decorated with buttercream and royal icing using a variety of different nozzles and piping techniques, this is a great project for beginners to get to grips with. With bright red rosettes, luscious green leaves and cute little bows, these biscuits are almost too pretty to eat!

Melting snowman biscuits

Kids are sure to adore this super fun and extra easy Christmas cookie decorating idea! You don’t need a fancy Christmas biscuit recipe to use as the base – any basic biscuit recipe will do the trick. Decorate a circular biscuit base with a puddle of royal icing, broken pretzels and a fluffy marshmallow to create this marvellous melted snowman.

The coolest Christmas trees

Practice your piping techniques with these beautiful Christmas tree cookies, decorated with royal icing. Grab a piping bag with a thin nozzle and get creative with stripes, dots and zig-zag shapes to give your mini trees heaps of texture.

Pretty Christmas present biscuits

You don’t need any special Christmas baking supplies to decorate these gorgeous gift biscuits! Use a simple cookie cutter to stamp out your design and top with coloured buttercream and sprinkles to decorate these festive treats.

Holly leaf biscuits

If you’re looking for a quick fix, this Christmas biscuit idea is the one for you! It might look impressive, but this creative idea is easy to execute and takes no time at all. This wet-on-wet technique uses watered-down royal icing to ‘flood’ the top of the cookie before piping ‘B’ shapes on top and dragging out the holly leaves with a cocktail stick. You could even decorate shop-bought cookies – the decoration is so impressive that no one

Perfect poinsettia biscuits

We love the definition and texture of these pretty poinsettia cookies. Use watered-down royal icing to cover the biscuit and pipe on the centre of the flowers. Once the icing has set, you can use a slightly thicker icing in the same colour as the base to pipe around the edge, giving an instant 3D effect.

Giant Christmas tree cookie cake

If you’re searching for a bigger bake that the whole family can have fun making, this Christmas cookie cake ticks all the boxes! Bake a huge triangle cookie, cover with green buttercream or royal icing and then let kids get creative with decorating with sweets and sprinkles.

‘Broken’ gingerbread men

Kids will love these funny little gingerbread men, complete with missing limbs and shocked expressions as if someone has already taken a bite! These biscuits have been covered with a layer of watered-down royal icing, but if you were in a hurry you could easily pipe directly onto the biscuit.

An army of Nutcracker biscuits

This is one for all the piping pros out there! Make a troop of uniformed Nutcracker soldiers with ornate, colourful royal icing. If you've not got time to get your hands on a Nutcracker soldier cookie cutter, get creative and use a standard gingerbread man cutter instead.

Festive flower biscuit platter

This fabulous Christmas biscuit idea turns your sweet bakes into a stunning centrepiece for a festive feast! You only need a couple of Christmas cookie cutters in different sizes to create this cool design. We love how royal icing has been used to add extra definition.

The prettiest peppermint meringues

They might not have a biscuit base, but these perfect peppermint meringues definitely deserve a place on the best Christmas cookie recipes list! These little peppermint bites are melt-in-your-mouth delicious and packed with mint choc flavour, and the red and white swirls make them fabulously festive!

Elegant winter wreaths

Pipe a plethora of beautiful winter blooms onto a base of fluffy meringue to create these simply stunning winter wreaths. All you need is your cookie decorating supplies a little patience and a steady hand and these delicious morsels will be the talk of any party!

Simple Christmas tree biscuits

If you’ve not got a massive stash of cookie cutters, this is a beautiful bake to improvise! The shape of this cookie base can easily be cut by hand using a ruler and a template. Decorated using royal icing, you create the fun pattern on these biscuits by dragging icing with a cocktail stick – a super easy way of giving your cookies a professional finish.

Snowflake biscuit wreath

We can’t get enough of this stylish Christmas biscuit wreath! Grab a bundle of snowflake-shaped cutters in different sizes and have fun decorating the cookies with snowy white royal icing. Finished with edible glitter and silver pearls, these cookies are almost too beautiful to eat!

Christmas dunkers

These dunker biscuits couldn’t be easier to make. Roll out a basic dough and cut into rectangular squares, before baking and topping with rustic royal icing in festive colours. Add sprinkles and wrap them up and these biscuits will make the perfect homemade Christmas present for teachers, neighbours and friends!

The cutest gingerbread men

These Christmas biscuits are almost too cute to eat! Fill your home with the festive fragrance of freshly-baked gingerbread men and carefully bend their arms into a hug when they’re just out the oven. Pipe simple features and add an icing snowflake for the full effect!