This easy Christmas Sprinkle Cookie Recipe makes cookies that are full of fun and festive red and green sprinkles. These mouthwatering cookies have deliciously soft centers with slightly crispy edges and with all the bright colors they are perfect for all your holiday baking!
Sprinkle Christmas Cookies
Sprinkle cookies are always a huge crowd pleaser! During Christmas season, when holiday baking is fully underway, it’s always great to have a tried-and-true cookie recipe that you know will turn out awesome every time. It gets bonus points if the recipe is easy enough that allows the kids to join and help.
These sweet little sprinkle cookies are a great recipe that you will want to keep on hand all year long! They are pillowy soft cookies that are easy to bake and because they have ever child’s favorite ingredient, sprinkles, you are sure to get plenty of volunteers!
The recipe for these delicious soft sugar cookies with festive sprinkles, starts with the same base as this Classic Sugar Cookie Dough, which can be used to make these precious Hidden Kiss Cookies, Frosted Sugar Cookies and yummy Thumbprint cookies.
Because the dough recipe makes about 6 dozen cookies, you could divide it up and make some of each kind of these cookie recipes for an impressive variety to add to your holiday dessert table.
💗 Why We Love This Recipe
- Easy dough recipe that doesn’t require chill time or special step. Just mix, roll and bake…easy peasy!
- They are the perfect cookie for parties, cookie exchanges, gift giving or just holiday snacking.
- Great for any holiday! Just change the color of sprinkles based on the occasion.
🥄 Recommended Tools
- Electric mixer
- Mixing bowls
- Sheet pan
- Small cookie scoop
- Measuring cup
- Measuring spoons
🛒 What’s Needed to Make Christmas Sprinkle Cookies
- Unsalted butter- softened
- Shortening
- Sugar
- Eggs
- Vanilla extract (you can also use almond extract)
- All-purpose flour
- Instant vanilla pudding
- Baking powder
- Salt
- Green, red & white jimmie sprinkles
📄 How to Make Sprinkle Christmas Cookies
Preheat oven to 350 line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Step One: Combine Wet Ingredients
- In the large bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream butter, shortening, and sugar until well combined (you can use a hand mixer as well).
- Add in eggs, vanilla, and instant pudding mix. Continue mixing until thoroughly incorporated.
Step Two: Mix in Dry Ingredients
- In a separate bowl whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.
- Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture a little at a time mixing between additions until all the flour is incorporated
Step Three: Add the Sprinkles
- Place the cup of sprinkles in a shallow bowl or dish.
- Scoop out the sugar cookie dough in tablespoon size scoops. Roll dough into a ball.
- Place the cookie dough balls into dish of jimmies and roll around pressing lightly until the dough ball is covered evenly with sprinkles.
Step Four: Bake and Serve!
- Place on prepared baking sheets about 2 inches apart.
- Bake cookies for 12-15 minutes or until set and lightly golden brown around the edges.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
Other Festive Sprinkle Combinations:
This recipe makes perfect sugar cookies for all special occasions just by changing the kind of sprinkles you use. Here are some are popular color combinations to consider:
- Birthdays: Make them funfetti cookies by adding rainbow sprinkles.
- Valentine’s Day: Pink and red jimmies work great. You can also roll the dough balls into red or pink sanding sugar before baking.
- Halloween: Purple, orange and black will make spooktacular cookies!
- St. Patrick’s Day: Green and orange sprinkle cookies are sure to bring you the luck of the Irish!
- 4th of July: Red and blue jimmies against the pale colored cookies look very patriotic.
- Thanksgiving: Orange and brown sprinkles give these delicious cookies pretty fall colors.
Tips for Perfect Sprinkle Cookies
- When measuring flour and sugar for this sugar cookie recipe, don’t pack it down into the bottom of a measuring cup. Just lightly scoop the flour and sugar into the cup and scrape the top with a flat edge of an offset spatula or long knife. This will ensure you get perfectly soft sprinkle sugar cookies every time.
- Always start with room temperature ingredients. This ensures a couple of things. It allows the butter to mix in with eggs without separating. It also makes your cookies bake evenly.
- When baking cookies, you want to always start off with a cooled baking sheet. You can simple just run it under cold water to cool and dry it off, if needed. When you add dough to a warm cookie sheet, it will cause the dough to spread before it begins to bake.
- For best results in getting evenly baked and even sized cookies, use a small cookie scoop or a scale to help you form the same size cookie dough balls.
- These are buttery cookies, so parchment paper works better than baking mats. The parchment paper keeps the dough from spreading too much while baking.
- Watch the time closely. The actual baking time it takes for these cookies to be done depends on your oven temperatures. Start checking them after 12 minutes. You may have to give them an extra minute or two until the edges look ever so slightly golden (not brown) and the center of the cookies no longer appear doughy.
- To get really smooth edges on these baked cookies, you want to make sure the dough balls are nice and smooth when you’re rolling them. Remember that any cracks you see in the raw dough balls will only get bigger when the cookies bake
Can I Add Frosting to These Easy Sprinkle Cookies?
Absolutely! You can make a basic cream cheese or buttercream frosting and add it to the tops of the cookies once they have completely cooled. Because you’ll be covering up the colorful sprinkles, be sure to add extra sprinkles to the top of the frosting.
Can I Make the Dough in Advance?
This easy recipe for cookie dough can be made up to three to four days in advance. For best results, you will want to make sure your mixing bowl with the dough is covered tightly with plastic wrap, or that you transfer the dough to an airtight container before adding it to the fridge.
You’ll want to wait until right before baking them to add the sprinkles to prevent the sprinkles from running onto dough.
Can I Freeze These Cookies?
You sure can. Because these cookies aren’t frosted you can just drop them into an airtight container or freezer bag, and they’ll keep for a couple of months in the freezer. To thaw, you can just set the container on the counter until they’re thawed out.
🎄 More Christmas Cookie Recipes
- Christmas Wreath Cornflake Cookies
- Chewy Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
- Pinwheel Sugar Cookies
- Cranberry and White Chocolate Cookies
- Peanut butter balls
Christmas Sprinkle Cookies
Ingredients
- ¾ cups butter softened
- ¼ cup vegetable shortening
- 1 ½ cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 3.4 ounces instant vanilla pudding mix 1 box
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- Christmas sprinkles we used red, gree, and white jimies
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Cream together butter, shortening, and sugar with an electric mixer.
- Add in eggs, vanilla, and instant pudding mix. Continue mixing until thoroughly incorporated.
- In a separate bowl stir together flour, baking powder and salt.
- Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture a little at a time mixing between additions until all the flour is incorporated.
- Place jimmies in a shallow bowl or dish.
- Scoop out dough in tablespoon size scoops. Roll dough into a ball. Place into dish of jimmies and roll around pressing lightly until the dough ball is covered evenly with sprinkles.
- Place on baking sheet about 2 inches apart.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes or until set and lightly golden brown around the edges.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Nutrition
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