Italian Christmas Cookies

Italian Christmas cookies are soft, sweet, and cake-like cookies topped with a simple icing and festive sprinkles. They’re the perfect little bites of holiday joy, bringing color and cheer to any cookie tray. With pantry staples you likely already have on hand, you can whip up a batch in no time!

Love More Christmas Cookies? Try My Christmas Kitchen Sink Cookie or this Cannoli Cookies next.

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

These cookies are soft, tender, and lightly sweet with a simple glaze and festive sprinkles that make them irresistible. They taste like bakery-quality treats without the price tag. Perfect for sharing, gifting, or sneaking a few extra for yourself!

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Ingredient List

For the Cookies:

• 2¼ cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3 large eggs
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ½ cup salted butter (1 stick), room temperature
• 1½ teaspoons extract (almond, vanilla, or anise—your choice!)

For the Icing/Glaze:

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 2-3 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon extract (almond or vanilla)
• Sprinkles (nonpareils or whatever makes your heart sing)

Substitution Notes: Out of almond extract? Use vanilla – still tastes amazing. Want that old-school Italian vibe? Try anise extract, but fair warning: it’s like black licorice had a baby with Christmas. My kids hate it, my dad loves it. Pick your battles.

Why These Ingredients Work

Butter at room temp is everything. Cold butter won’t mix right and you’ll get lumpy cookies that taste like disappointment. Melted butter makes them spread into pancakes. Room temp butter creams up fluffy and perfect.

Three eggs sounds excessive but trust me on this. They make these cookies stupid soft. Like, melt-in-your-mouth soft. Two eggs and they’re just regular cookies. Three eggs and suddenly you’re a baking wizard.

The glaze is basically legal crack. Powdered sugar, splash of milk, extract. That’s it. No fancy technique needed. Dip cookie, add sprinkles, watch people lose their minds.

Essential Tools and Equipment

Nothing fancy here. Electric mixer (hand mixer works fine), couple bowls, cookie scoop if you have one. Parchment paper because nobody wants to scrape cookies off the pan like some kind of animal.

Oh, and a cooling rack. Don’t be that person who puts hot cookies on paper towels. They’ll stick and you’ll cry. Ask me how I know.

How To Make Italian Christmas Cookies

Mix the Dry Ingredients

Flour and baking powder in a bowl. Whisk it. Set it aside. Don’t overthink this step.

Cream the Butter

Beat the hell out of room temperature butter for 3-4 minutes until it looks pale and fluffy. If it’s not fluffy, keep beating. Fluffy butter equals good cookies.

Add Wet Ingredients

Crack in your eggs, dump the sugar, add extract. Mix until combined. Looks chunky and weird? Good. That’s normal.

Combine Everything

Add flour mixture. Mix just until you don’t see dry flour anymore. Stop immediately. Overmixed dough makes tough cookies and we don’t have time for that disappointment.

Chill the Dough

Fridge for an hour minimum. Yeah, I know it sucks to wait. Go clean your kitchen or something. The dough needs to firm up or you’ll have a sticky mess on your hands.

Shape and Bake

Oven to 350°F. Roll dough into walnut-sized balls with greased hands because this dough is sticky as hell. Space them out on parchment paper. Bake 8-10 minutes max. They should look barely done, not golden brown.

Cool Completely

Wait until they’re completely cool before glazing. Hot cookies make the glaze disappear faster than my patience on a Monday morning.

Make the Glaze

Powdered sugar, 2-3 tablespoons milk, extract. Whisk until smooth and thick enough to coat a spoon. Too thin? More sugar. Too thick? More milk.

Glaze and Decorate

Flip cookie upside down, dunk in glaze, flip back over onto cooling rack. Sprinkle immediately while wet. Wait 15 minutes for it to set or you’ll have a mess.

You Must Know

Butter temperature is make-or-break. Room temp means you can easily press your finger into it but it’s not melty. Leave it out for 2 hours or microwave in 10-second bursts until it’s right.

Personal Secret: These cookies are done when they look underbaked. I’m dead serious. They’ll look pale and soft, maybe even a little raw. Pull them out anyway. They keep cooking on the hot pan and end up perfectly soft inside.

Pro Tips & Cooking Hacks

Dough too sticky to handle? Two options: spray your hands with Pam or stick the bowl back in the fridge for another 20 minutes. Cold dough is way easier to work with.

Glaze consistency driving you nuts? Start thick and add milk literally one teaspoon at a time. It’s easier to thin out than thicken up. Trust me on this – I’ve thrown out entire batches of too-thin glaze.

Use a small cookie scoop if you have one. Same size cookies, less mess, faster process. Mine’s the 1-tablespoon size and it’s perfect for these.

Flavor Variations & Suggestions

Want lemon cookies? Use lemon extract and add some lemon zest to the dough. My sister does this and they’re bomb.

Chocolate lovers can dip half the cookie in melted chocolate instead of doing the glaze thing. Kids go crazy for this version.

Different colored glazes are fun if you’re feeling extra. Red and green for Christmas, pastels for Easter. Food coloring is your friend.

Make-Ahead Options

Dough keeps in the fridge for 3 days, no problem. Sometimes I make it Sunday night and bake Wednesday when I need cookies fast.

You can freeze the shaped dough balls too. Put them on a sheet pan, freeze solid, then throw in a freezer bag. Bake straight from frozen, just add a minute or two to the time.

Already baked cookies store great for a week in a container. Don’t glaze them until you’re ready to serve though – glazed ones get weird after a few days.

Recipe Notes & Baker’s Tips

Extract flavor matters way more than you’d think. Almond extract tastes like real Italian bakery cookies. Vanilla is safe but boring. Anise is polarizing – people either love it or think you’re trying to poison them.

Those sprinkles aren’t just for looks. They add a little crunch that makes each bite more interesting. Don’t skip them unless you hate joy.

Serving Suggestions

These are perfect for cookie exchanges because they travel well and look fancy. I always make a double batch in December – one for us, one for gifting.

They’re great with coffee in the morning or as dessert after dinner. My kids dunk them in milk and make a huge mess, but they’re happy so whatever.

Put them on a nice plate if you’re trying to impress people. The white glaze and colorful sprinkles photograph really well for Instagram if that’s your thing.

How to Store Your Italian Christmas Cookies

Airtight container on the counter for up to a week. Layer them with parchment if you’re feeling fancy, but honestly they disappear too fast for that to matter.

These freeze amazingly well for up to 3 months. Thaw on the counter for 30 minutes and they taste fresh-baked.

Pro tip: store unglazed cookies separately and glaze right before serving. The glaze gets funky after a few days but the cookies stay perfect.

Allergy Information

Contains: Eggs, dairy, gluten Gluten-free option: Substitute with a 1:1 gluten-free flour blend Dairy-free option: Use vegan butter substitute and plant-based milk for the glaze Egg-free: Try using flax eggs (3 tablespoons ground flaxseed mixed with 9 tablespoons water)

Questions I Get Asked A Lot

My cookies spread like crazy. What happened?

Your butter was too warm or you skipped chilling the dough. Both mistakes make cookies pancake out. Also check your baking powder – old stuff doesn’t work.

Can I use different extracts?

Absolutely. Almond, vanilla, lemon, anise – whatever floats your boat. Just stick to 1½ teaspoons worth.

My glaze won’t stick.

Cookies are too hot or your glaze is too thin. Let cookies cool completely and thicken the glaze with more powdered sugar.

💬 Tried this recipe? Leave a comment and rating below! I’d love to hear which extract flavor became your favorite, and don’t forget to share a photo—there’s nothing I love more than seeing these cookies bring joy to your kitchen.