The Santa Clause Cookies.
Officially kicking off the holiday season with The Santa Clause Cookies. Made with double the vanilla and sweet brown sugar, these cookies are soft, buttery, and perfectly sweet with hints of caramel throughout. They’re generously glazed with a sweet, thick, and creamy vanilla bean glaze that truly makes these cookies melt in your mouth. The secret is all in the combination of hazelnut liquor, vanilla, and brown sugar, which keep these cookies incredibly flavorful, soft, and so delicious. Finish them off with a light dusting of vanilla sugar to keep the decorating simple and easy. Fun to bake, delicious to eat, a great homemade gift, and a festive addition to your holiday cookie box!
My favorite Christmas cookies…for your Black Friday baking and snacking!
Hoping you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families!! I know so many of you made recipes from HBH. And I mean so many. We’ve been LOVING getting to see every last dish being made on Instagram. It’s always so fun to see what everyone is making. And you guys? I’m feeling extra thankful for you all! The last couple of days we’ve truly been overwhelmed with messages in regards to Thanksgiving. We’ve never seen so many cocktails mixed up, turkeys roasted, and pies baked than we have this year. Grateful for you all.
And, shout out to my cousins, Maggie and Abby, who are both apart of our small HBH team. They’ve been working overtime to help manage all the messages coming in. I couldn’t do it without these two!
But today? Today we’re moving onto CHRISTMAS, my very favorite time of year, it’s finally here!
And to celebrate? We have cookies! Possibly the best tasting sugar cookies…that just so happen to be easy (or at least easier), and fun to make.
I have to admit, I spent a lot of time thinking about what would be the perfect post to share with you all today. I went back and forth with a few ideas (as I always do). But in the end, I had these cookies pictured in my head and my excitement for them won me over. These are the best way to officially welcome in the holiday season. Along with all the decorating, holiday music, baking, and time with friends and family that’s to come.
They’re especially perfect if you happen to be trimming the tree and decking the halls today…like I am.
here’s the story.
I come up with recipes in unusual ways. I’m very visual and often have a vision in my head of the recipe I want to create. That was the case with these cookies. I had one picture in my head and one goal when I set out to make them.
The picture was a snowy, winter wonderland with Santa front and center. Kind of like his own snowy North Pole. I wanted to use lots of fun snowflake cookie cutters and Christmas trees with a few Santas snuggled throughout my snowy scene. And then, as I was starring at the photos, it hit me, these needed to be called, The Santa Clause Cookies. The Santas remind me so much of Tim Allen in The Santa Clause…one of my favorite Christmas movies.
the santa clause cookies. details…
The goal was simple. Create a sugar cookie that actually tastes GOOD. As in not just sugary, but a cookie with real flavor, and a frosting that doesn’t just taste like cardboard. All in a beautiful wintry setting.
I really LOVE these cookies, but every other sugar cookie? Not usually my thing. My pet peeve with typical sugar cookies is that they just taste like sugar. There’s no flavor. So that’s why I love these cookies, these cookies have flavor! Some of the best cookies to come out of my kitchen. Dramatic, but even my mom agrees, these are DELICIOUS.
And they happen to be pretty easy too. Well, depending on how you decide to decorate. You can keep things simple or go all out, but I’ll leave that up to you!
These cookies are soft, buttery, and hinted with just the right amount of brown sugar, which has hints of caramel from the molasses.
The process is simple. Beat the butter with brown sugar, add an egg, add in the dry ingredients, roll, cut, and bake. There’s absolutely nothing fancy here.
Whenever I make any kind of cut-out cookie, I always like to roll out the dough, cut the cookies, and then freeze the cut cookies on a baking sheet for a few minutes. This ensures that the cookies hold their shape. To cut my cookies, I used varying snowflake cookie cutters, a holiday tree, and a star for Santa. But you can use any shapes you have on hand, or that your family loves the most.
the frosting.
I kept it simple since I wanted the color to remain white, but I made mine with double the vanilla and a splash of hazelnut liquor.
In addition to my vanilla frosting, I also made a simple cream cheese buttercream to use for Santa’s hat and beard. Both are SO good. You can make one or the other…or both! It’s Christmas, tis’ the season!
a couple special touches.
One, hazelnut liquor, which is not needed, but it does add something special. The sweet liquor really helps to highlight all the vanilla within the recipe. It’s a pricey ingredient, but if you make a lot of holiday sweets…and cocktails, it’s definitely a liquor I would recommend having on hand.
The smell alone reminds me of the holidays.
Two, a little vanilla sugar for decorating. Which is simply just sugar and vanilla bean powder. Not only does this sugar add a sparkle to each cookie, but it gives these White Christmas Cookies that extra special and oh so sweet holiday touch.
decorating is easy…
Well, I kept mine easier anyway. The Santa cookie took me a bit longer than the trees and snowflakes. But all-in-all, you can re-create these with no fancy ingredients or equipment!
Just find some fun sprinkles, red sanding sugar, mini chocolate, and use up that homemade vanilla sugar. I did my best to explain my process within the directions, but guys, have fun with these cookies! The more imperfect they are the cuter they end up being. So just have fun!
Hope you guys love these as much as I do! Happy Christmas baking to you all! See ya tomorrow for a very special Christmas drink!
