Do you need easy cookie recipes for a cookie tray or just for serving? Try these recipes. Peppermint Chocolate Chip, Christmas fudge, and Christmas Pinwheels. All of these recipes are simple to make using pantry style ingredients. Some were featured in All About the Table magazine, Christmas Issue.

What makes a Great Christmas Cookie Tray?

Making a great cookie tray starts with a cookie theme, like Christmas. What flavors do you and your guests love? Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Peppermint? Whatever you love and enjoy making choose those recipes. Also it is helpful if you try to keep the color scheme similar. For example, Christmas Fudge is a candy, but it is red, green and white, So with that in mind, select cookies that are red like candy canes, have green as in pistachios or white like butter cut out cookies. Or maybe you make thumbprint cookies, and fill 6 cookies with peppermint red buttercream, 6 with green buttercream frosting, and 6 with melted white chocolate. Christmas Cookies Santa Will Love!

Let’s Make Peppermint Chocolate Chip Cookies

Let’s start with Peppermint Chocolate Chip cookies. These cookies are chock full of chocolate chips, chopped candy canes, and pieces of Ande’s creme de mint chocolate candies. So basically it is a chocolate chip recipe with added peppermint and chocolate flavors. They are soft and chewy good. You will love this cookie!

Here’s a tip: make a batch of cookie dough, roll the dough in 1″ balls, place on a baking sheet and freeze until firm. ( Make sure your cookie tray fits inside your freezer). Then place the frozen balls in freezer safe zip lock baggies, bake cookies as needed. No need to thaw before baking. Once baked, if you want to add more candy canes or chocolate mint pieces, chop and add while cookies are still warm. Sprinkle with sea salt for added garnish if you would like.

Christmas Candy Kids will Love- Christmas White Chocolate Fudge

How to Make The Christmas Pinwheel Cookie

The next cookie is the Christmas Pinwheel. Dough is divided into thirds and tinted individually, super red, leaf green and pure white or leave natural. Tip: wear plastic gloves to knead the intense colors of the dough, as the food gel will stain your hands or anything it touches. You will be rolling each tinted dough between two pieces of parchment paper to help with rolling. It isn’t hard but time consuming. Once dough is tinted and rolled individually in to a rectangle, stack each color together. Chill log before slicing. Read instructions on layering the tinted dough to get the look in the photo.