Name: Holiday Butter Cookies
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 30 min
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 2/3 cup (5 1/4 ounces/150 grams) superfine sugar (SEE NOTE); 16 tablespoons salted butter, cubed, softened but still cool; 2 cups (10-ounces/285 grams) all-purpose flour; 2 large egg yolks; 1 teaspoon vanilla extract; 1 teaspoon – 1 tablespoon whole milk; Melted chocolate (white or dark); Melted candy melts; Coarse or dusting sugars; Nonpareils

Jump to Recipe·Print Recipe

One thing’s for sure, these holiday butter cookies drizzled with white chocolate are far better than the blue-tin cookies you remember from your childhood. Hell, adulthood even. Let’s not front, we all still grab a container of those Royal Dansk butter cookies with the sugar baked into the surface, nestled into little paper cups around this time of year. But if you want to step it up for Santa, you’ve gotta make these holiday butter cookies. They’re phenomenal, and flat-out crack’like. You’ll make them, and see them disappear within a days time.

If you’ve ever wanted to make amazing Christmas cookies for Santa (or yourself), I’m here for you. I really need you guys to listen to my advice here. Although these cookies are probably the easiest cookies in the world to make, how they’re executed is imperative if you want those adorable ridges. Cookies that consist of this much butter, can go awry — fast. If you follow these tips, you’ll have some super amazing Christmas cookies.

Holiday Butter Cookie Baking Tips

- Don’t use butter that is so softened that it’s greasy. The butter should be softened, but still cool, almost waxy. If it melts between your fingers as soon as you touch it, it’s too softened.
- Use superfine sugar if you can! You can easily make your own by processing granulated sugar for about a minute. Or, you can buy it. If you can’t process your own sugar nor purchase superfine sugar, just stick to regular granulated. Nobody will be jailed, and the cookies will still be great.
- The batter is designed to be stiff, and piping it out will be a struggle initially, but it shouldn’t make you pop a blood vessel. You will get a workout, though! Therefore, make sure you add just enough milk to soften it, but not make it mushy. It should be stiffer than a regular chocolate chip cookie dough, but slightly softer than a shortbread cookie dough.
- Err on the side of too stiff, instead of too mushy. Don’t add more than a tablespoon of milk. Reason being, due to the amount of butter in the dough, it will eventually soften enough in your warm hands to be pipe’able. My first 6 cookies were tough to get out, but after that, they came out perfectly.
- Use a large open star tip to pipe if you want those ridges.
- Don’t want to pipe? You can simply scoop or slice these cookies if you don’t feel like going through the hassle of piping.
- Can you use a cookie press? Probably! I don’t have one, so I wouldn’t know. But give it a try.
- Refrigerate the dough after you pipe the cookies out for at least 30 minutes! This is important. The butter will continue to soften and melt when you’re piping, so you don’t want to put warm cookies in a hot oven. You’ll lose the design you put so much muscle into, and they’ll just melt into a pool of cookie nothing-ness (still delicious, but yeah). Refrigerating the dough will help the cookies stiffen back up, the butter to firm up, and the outcome should be a cookie with some ridges.
- If you want sugar baked into the cookies, simply sprinkle the raw piped cookies with coarse sugar prior to baking.
- Let them cool completely.

At the end of the day, things can go wrong visually, but even if your cookies flatten and spread, they’ll still be delicious. Just keep practicing.

How to make Butter Cookies

We’re gonna turn this granulated sugar into superfine sugar. Simply process it for about 30 seconds or so.

Until it looks like this. Boom.

The lineup.

Pour the superfine sugar into the softened but still cool butter.

Using an electric hand mixer, cream the butter and sugar.

Until it looks like this.

Add the egg yolks and vanilla.

Beat it up again.

Until it’s fully incorporated like this.

Scrape everything down, just to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

Finally, add the flour.

Ok, so honestly, you don’t want to turn the mixer back on because flour can go flying everywhere. I highly recommend you take a rubber spatula, and just start gently folding the flour into the butter mixture just until it’s not super floury. Like so.

Now you can turn the mixer back on, and no flour is flying around! Success.

Add 1 teaspoon, and no more than 1 tablespoon of whole milk. This is necessary to soften it just enough so that it’s not a brick.

Mix mix mix, just until it comes together. When you get a mound of it stuck in the beater, it’s ready.

Here’s the finished dough. It’s stiff, but not a brick. It’s somewhat soft enough to be piped.

Quickly place the dough into a prepared piping bag fitted with a large star tip. I say quickly, because you don’t want the butter to melt too much. Pipe the cookies out, and place them in the fridge to stiffen up for at least 30 minutes.

Here’s a quick video on how I piped my cookies. They were chilled immediately for 30 minutes after this before they were baked.

Bake them for 12-15 minutes, or until the edges are just starting to turn golden brown. Here they are.

Here they are again.

Let these cookies cool completely! You are free to dip them in white chocolate, dark chocolate, whatever you want. Go nuts.

Make sure you take heed to the tips I’ve provided above. They’ll answer a lot of your questions. These cookies are bomb, easy to make, yummy to eat, and fun to decorate. Honestly, they’re so good you can skip decorating them altogether, but if you want them to look a little festive — go for it. Buttery, soft, crisp, crumbly, just pure perfection. Seriously, they’re so delicious — you’ll make these all the time!

Check out these Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies while you’re here.

Recipe Card powered by

Disclosure: This site uses various affiliate links. If a purchase is made using one of our affiliate links, we receive a small commission which helps support our efforts. Please read our Privacy Policy for more information.