Now that the holiday season is upon us, here’s a fun recipe for a sweet treat perfect for Christmas Eve. These Christmas Wreath Cookies are beautiful, soft and extremely delicious. I love how they look as part of a cookie spread, at the table or even at the base of the chimney for Santa to eat.
Christmas Wreath Cookies
I’ve shared these Christmas Wreath cookies on the blog but in a slightly different version. They really make the most delicious Christmas treats! Back then I made them a solid green color to make green wreaths. That’s fun and more true to reality. However, I have been fantasizing about making them double-colored ever since! I just needed to see how they turned out. Of course, if you prefer you can make these with green food coloring instead of red and the result will still be stunning. I wouldn’t recommend making them half green and half red because the place where the colors meet and blend slightly would turn out brown. I’m not sure if that would look so pretty for our cookie wreaths!
Ingredients
To make these Christmas Wreath Cookies we only need a handful of ingredients that will make for the perfect cookie dough. They’re all simple ingredients that you can find at the grocery store easily. The only one that might be a bit more complex is the gel food coloring but it’s still pretty easy to get. Here’s the list of simple ingredients you will need:
- Unsalted butter: You need the butter to be at room temperature so that we can cream it with the sugar. If my butter is too cold I like to place it in the microwave using the defrost mode for a few seconds. Just be careful not to make melted butter!
- Icing sugar: The icing sugar will give us a soft and velvety finish to the cookies.
- Egg white: Using the egg whites only helps us prevent the cookies from spreading too much in the oven and losing their shape.
- Vanilla extract or essence: A bit of vanilla extract goes a long way in adding aroma and flavour. You can also use almond extract if you like.
- Salt: A bit of salt is always needed in sweet recipes to balance them.
- All-purpose flour: The flour will bind all our ingredients together to get that perfect cookie shape.
- Cornstarch: A bit of cornstarch helps to keep the Christmas Wreath Cookies soft when you bite into them. They really melt away in your mouth.
- Gel food coloring: Gel food coloring adds a lot of color without adding too much moisture to the dough.
- Sprinkles: Sprinkles are optional… but are they? They’re just the cutest.
How to get the swirl effect
Once your cookie dough for the Christmas Wreath Cookies is ready, it’s time to shape and bake the cookies. The way they look is part of what makes them perfect for family gatherings! Here are the steps you will follow:
- Weigh the dough and divide it into two exact portions. Add red or green food coloring to one of the halves a bit at a time until you like the color.
- Place each dough in a piping bag and use it to lay the colors onto a piece of plastic wrap. Don’t make too many layers of color. I made two layers of each color. If you make thiner stripes of dough they mix a lot more as you pipe the cookies and you don’t get such a dramatic color shift.
- Using the plastic wrap roll the dough into a cylinder. If there’s excess plastic wrap from the edge of the cylinder use a pair of scissors to cut it off. Insert this tube into another piping bag fitted with a star nozzle. Avoid using small nozzles! Mine had 1cm or 1/3 of an inch in diameter.
- Now comes the best part: pipe the dough onto a prepared baking sheet with parchment paper, forming a circle as you pipe and giving them that wreath shape. If the place where you stop the circle doesn’t look too neat, you can tap it lightly with your finger and it will smoothen out.
- Add candy sprinkles on top of the cookies.
- I bake Christmas Wreath Cookies for 8-10 minutes or until they’re just dry but not golden.
Tips for making these Christmas Wreath Cookies
These festive Christmas Wreath Cookies aren’t hard to make. The piping could be tricky for a few people but I promise you will quickly get the hang of it. Just so that I’m certain that you’ll get an amazing result, here are a few tips that might be useful:
- Use gel food coloring: This is the perfect product to dye our dough because it has a low percentage of water content. Liquid food coloring would add too much liquid to the dough, changing its composition, and affecting the final result.
- Avoid silicone mats: I have noticed that these piped butter cookies don’t do too well on silicone mats. They tend to spread more and lose their piped shape more. Thus, I recommend lining your cookie sheet with wax paper or parchment paper to bake cookies like these.
- Avoid marbling the dough too much: The first time I attempted to make these I made too many streaks of different-colored dough. It looks nice when you’re laying the colors onto each other, but as the go through the piping tip they marble a lot more. That’s why I recommend that you keep the colors thick in the plastic wrap. That way we get a much nicer effect.
- How to keep them: Once they’re baked, keep your Christmas Wreath Cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
More Holiday Cookies
Whether you’re making these Christmas Wreath Cookies for cookie exchanges, a holiday cookie tray or a dessert table, chances are you’re going to need more easy cookie recipes. Cute traditional Christmas cookies are always the best part of festive treats. There are many types of cookie suggestions here and some use a cookie cutter, others don’t. I just know you will love these cookies:
Wreath Butter Cookies
Ingredients
- 100 g unsalted butter at room temperature
- 50 g icing sugar
- 1 egg white
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or essence
- ½ tsp salt
- 100 g all-purpose flour
- 60 g cornstarch
- Red gel food colouring
- Sprinkles
Instructions
- Whisk together the butter and sugar until creamy.
- Add the egg white and incorporate it by whisking again.
- Add the vanilla and mix.
- Add the salt, flour and cornstarch and mix in using a spatula.
- Weigh the dough and divide it into two exact portions. Add red or green food coloring to one of the halves a bit at a time until you like the color.
- Place each dough in a piping bag and use it to lay the colors onto a piece of plastic wrap. Don't make too many layers of color. I made two layers of each color. If you make thiner stripes of dough they mix a lot more as you pipe the cookies and you don't get such a dramatic color shift.
- Using the plastic wrap roll the dough into a cylinder. If there's excess plastic wrap from the edge of the cylinder use a pair of scissors to cut it off. Insert this tube into another piping bag fitted with a star nozzle. Avoid using small nozzles! Mine had 1cm or 1/3 of an inch in diameter.
- Now comes the best part: pipe the dough onto a prepared baking sheet with parchment paper, forming a circle as you pipe and giving it that wreath shape. If the place where you stop the circle doesn't look too neat, you can tap it lightly with your finger and it will smoothen out.
- Sprinkle with sprinkles 😉
- Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C/350°F for 10-12min or until dry but not golden.
Notes
