Description
These soft Italian Christmas cookies with sweet glaze are the perfect addition to any holiday cookie platter!
Ingredients
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)
Instructions
Flour and baking powder in a bowl. Whisk it. Set it aside. Don’t overthink this step.
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.
Crack in your eggs, dump the sugar, add extract. Mix until combined. Looks chunky and weird? Good. That’s normal.
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.
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.
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.
Wait until they’re completely cool before glazing. Hot cookies make the glaze disappear faster than my patience on a Monday morning.
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.
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.
Notes
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.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes (plus 1 hour chilling)
- Cook Time: 8-10 minutes
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: Italian