For a couple Christmases of my childhood, we made a variety of cookie where we shaped tinted dough into holiday shapes. I thought they were fun to make and festive. I mean, the ones made at the end of the batch ended up a little dry and overworked, but they looked cute. :) There was the twisted plain dough/red dough candle cane and the red dough/green dough wreath. I don’t have the recipe from way back when but when I saw this cookie on Pinterest this fall, I have anxiously awaited doing a Christmas version.
This sugar cookie recipe is much different than the recipe of my youth but I really like it. It’s not overly sweet and along with tinting the dough and shaping it, the cookies get a roll in sugar so they sparkle. It also calls for lemon juice and zest so what might have been a bland cookie now has a light citrus taste. Yum!
Shaping the dough is my favorite part. I get to be creative! I thought ornament balls would be perfect for this, especially with the sugar sparkle. It’s simple shapes and oh, so cute!
After the dough is mixed, tint it to your desired colors but leave a little untinted for the top of the ornament. Roll the colored dough into long cylinders, the untinted into a square tube and then refrigerate all the dough to firm it up. To assemble the cookie, reroll the refrigerated dough to get it nice and round again. (Mine are about 2″ in diameter.) Then, using the untinted, square-shaped dough as a guide, cut a shallow channel in the colored dough and gently smoosh them together. If the dough is overly soft, put it in the fridge again. When it’s nice cold again, slice it up.
Quarter inch slices are plenty thick and when baked, the cookies are soft and chewy, with a touch of lemon. When still warm from the oven, roll the cookies in sugar to make them sparkle. Then stand back and watch them disappear.
Recipe adapted from Land O Lakes
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 Tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tsp freshly grated lemon zest
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 3 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- -
- food coloring
- 1/2 cup sugar
Instructions
- Cream together the butter and sugar in the bowl of a mixer.
- Add in the egg, lemon juice, lemon zest, salt and mix well.
- Add the flour and baking soda and mix until well combined.
- Separate the dough into however many colors you want to make, making sure to leave a small section without color for the top of the ornament. Add food coloring and knead the dough until the dough color is uniform.
- Roll the colored dough into cylinders, about 2" in diameter. Form the uncolored portion into a square tube.
- Wrap in wax paper and refridegerate at least 2 hours or overnight until firm.
- Place the 1/2 cup sugar in a bowl and set aside.
- To make the cookies, cut a small channel for the square tube to sit in and press together to connect.
- Then cut the cookie dough into 1/4 inch slices, reshaping the ornaments as needed.
- Place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and bake at 375F for 7-10 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned.
- Allow the cookies to cool for 1 minute and then roll the cookies in the sugar to coat them. Place on a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Store in a covered container.
Beautiful! The lemon flavor has to be yummy!!