Before Christmas, I enjoy making these little Christmas Cookies with my sons. This reminds me of my childhood when I helped my parents make big batches to offer to family, friends, and ate them all around Christmas time.
The base to make the little Christmas cookies is a “pâte sablée” (shortcrust dough) in which you can add spices, decorate, or keep simple, all of which taste good. In my family, we prefer to add dry fruits or nuts instead of more sugary things. My parents did not put any spices in it, but eventually I put in my own mix of spices. I think this adds a nice flavor to them.
These little Christmas Cookies can be stored well for a few weeks in a tin box if you are not too hungry 🙂
Little Christmas Cookies
Ingredients
- 250 g flour
- 125 g butter (I recommend Plugra) at room temperature
- 125 g sugar (or you can use half light brown sugar + half regular sugar
- 50 g almond powder
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ ginger
- ¼ cloves ground
- a pinch of all spice
- a pinch of salt
- dry fruits or/and nuts that you like (cranberries, raisin, apricot, pecans, hazelnut, walnuts...)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400F.
- In a bowl or stand mixer bowl, mix flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, spices (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, all spice) and almond powder.
- Add the soft butter and eggs, and mix until the ingredients are well combined.
- Lightly flour your work surface (I like to use a Silpat-lined ) and start to roll out the dough about 3mm thick. Cut out cookies using Christmas cookie cutter and put them on a cookie sheet with parchment paper or Silpat-lined.
- Lightly brush each cookie with a beaten egg, mixed with 1 teaspoon of water (to make smoothing the egg yolk easier) and put small pieces of dry fruits/ nuts on each cookie.
- Bake for 7 to 10 minutes (keep an eye on them).
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