25 Favorite Holiday Cookies

Do you make holiday cookies in your family? We typically haven't in years past, but I kind of love the idea of trying out one or two new recipes every year and building up a family cookie cookbook. Our kids love to bake and cookies are generally a pretty easy way to get them involved without risking some sort of kitchen disaster. So we're adding the activity to our Winter Bucket List (stay tuned next week for that ....) and have already started perusing the endless options. I'm thinking we'll have to figure out how to throw together a cookie exchange to prevent me from eating all. the. cookies. though. From the classic to the kooky, here are some of our favorites!

p.s. I'm also vaguely toying with the idea of all of us signing up for this. Seems like a fun activity to do over the winter break!

1/ The Best Cutout Sugar Cookies 2/ Color Dipped Gingerbread Cookies 3/ Mom's Russian Tea Cakes
4/ Holiday Crinkles Cookies5/ Stained Glass Sugar Cookies 6/ Vanilla + Chocolate Pizzelles
7/ White Chocolate + Peppermint Christmas Wreath Cookies 8/ Old Fashioned Gingerbread Men
9/ Peppermint Candy Cane Cookies 10/ Chocolate Amaretti Cookies 11/ Everything Sweet Sugar Cookies
12/ Frosted Peppermint Brownie Cookies 13/ Chocolate Swirl Meringue 14/ Gingerbread Animals
15/ Gingerbread Donut Cookies 16/ Sprinkle Cookies 17/ Coconut Snowball Cookies
18/ Christmas Tree Shortbread Cookies 19/ Pot of Gold Truffle 20/ Ginger Spiced Sugar Cookies
21/ Amaretti Cookies 22/ Almond Thumbprint Cookies with Dark Chocolate + Sea Salt
23/ Lemony Slice + Bakes 24/ Ombre Rainbow Cookies 25/ Peppermint Pattie Cookies 

Nutella + Pistachio Chocolate Chip Cookies

One spring break down! The kids return to school today for a few days, and then Cam has another week off. We had a great low-key week, complete with our first houseguests in the new house -- Nona and D-Rock! With the cold weather, we mostly did indoor activities. A few museums, bowling, movies, etc. And when the temps turned really freezing this past weekend, we decided baking was in order. Both kids continue to love helping in the kitchen and Cam and I made a delicious batch of these Nutella + Pistachio Chocolate Chip Cookies. There's a lot of blending involved, so Cami particularly loved helping out with this recipe! Also, they are delicious! A great balance of sweet and salty and general comfort-foodness while we continue to wait for actual spring.

Holidaze: Our Un-Holiday, Holiday Cookies

A few weeks ago, we went to an awesome chalk mural gathering at Art Yards down by Yards Park. As part of the event, nearby Buzz Bakery set up a cookie decorating station. And we had a blast smearing brightly-colored frosting and sugar on a variety of holiday sugar cookies. We made a whole bunch and really, really wanted to bring some to our teachers. But we don't celebrate Christmas at school and we also have lots of friends who celebrate holidays other than Christmas, so mom promised that we could make a new batch that would be just as tasty, just as brightly colored and holiday neutral.

Once mom was involved, you knew chocolate was going to be as well. Mom found a yummy chocolate cookie shape recipe and we cooked them up on a Sunday afternoon. We had a playdate planned with a friend on Monday and we were excited to decorate those sweet little chocolate woodland animals. Mom made a Target run while we were at school to get the colored sugar and spent a boat load of money on miscellaneous things, but when she got home, she realized she forgot the very thing she went for in the first place. She was in no mood for a second Target run that day, so she turned to the place that offers a solution for everything -- Pinterest -- and found a promising recipe for sparkly colored sugar (it doesn't turn out quite as glittery as Pinterest promises, but whatever does).

We had a blast getting sugared up on our playdate and made enough neon-colored un-holiday, holiday cookies to share with friends and family. I think we've started a new family tradition.