The holidays provide a good opportunity to indulge in several things: gifts, good company, cozy vibes and, perhaps, most importantly an endless stream of festive cookies. That’s why, this season, we’re baking to impress with a selection of showstopping cookies that will delight your guests with both their appearance and flavour. From deceptively easy cookie wreaths to decadent chocolate-cream rounds, these recipes will steal the show. Turkey, who?
1. Orange Shortbread Cookie Wreath
This stunning shortbread cookie wreath makes for a perfect holiday-dinner centerpiece. It looks hard to make, but don’t be daunted – there’s no one way to do it. Trust your gut and arrange the cookies however feels right to you. We’re also leaving you lots of room to play with: the colour of the icing and shapes of each decorative biscuit is totally up to you.
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2. Chocolate Shortbread Sandwich Cookies
Can you really do a holiday spread without a little chocolate? We think not. This chocolate shortbread cookie recipe will easily fit right in at any festive gathering thanks to the warming presence of cinnamon and allspice. They become even more decadent with a rich, dark-chocolate cream sandwiched in between two biscuits. Then we dip the cookies into melted chocolate, because why not, right?
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3. Chocolate Orange Crinkle Cookies
This crinkle cookie recipe won’t add too much stress to your plate before welcoming guests – just make sure to leave enough time for the dough to rest in the fridge. A bain-marie is recommended to melt the baking chocolate, but you can use a microwave to save some time. A snowy coating of icing sugar brings the cookies together in an appropriately festive way.
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4. Festive Shortbread Cookie Wreath
Gingerbread spice and hazelnuts bring a pleasant warm, nuttiness to this centrepiece-worthy shortbread wreath. We opted for star-shaped cookies for this holiday-ready recipe, but feel free to play around with different cookie cutter shapes and sizes—and remember to reserve your scraps so you can get the most out of your dough. The extra festive note comes with the subtly citrusy icing: Divide your batch into portions so use red food colouring to bring on the merriment.
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5. Holiday Cookie Tree
Switch things up with an eye-catching cookie pyramid, which is decorated with an irresistible mascarpone cream and orange blossom-flavoured icing. For this showstopper, we recommend going all in glam by using an edible gold leaf as the pièce de résistance.
