Easy Christmas Light Cookies

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These easy Christmas Light Cookies are a fun and festive way to welcome in the holiday season. Cookie crafts are a great way to get the kids and the whole family into the holiday spirit too. 

Looking for more festive recipes? Try my Crockpot Christmas Candy and Melted Snowman Christmas Cookies and Grinch Popcorn.

Weight Watchers Points Included.

the completed Christmas Light Cookies ready to serve

These Christmas Light Cookies are the perfect addition to your Christmas Cookie baking traditions. They’re such fun to decorate and can be customized in so many ways. The ideas and options are endless. 

The kiddoes will love to get in on the action and help with the baking and decorating. Spending time together creating these lovely Christmas cookies is a perfect afternoon activity that is sure to create wonderful holiday memories. 

And you can make these from scratch or make your life even easier by starting with store bought sugar cookies. #easycookiesforlife.

Christmas Lights Cookies also make for a fun and festive edible gift to give during the holiday season that will be appreciated by friends and family alike. Oh and you can also do the same with these Christmas Tree Cupcakes and Chocolate Crinkle Cookies.

four of the completed Christmas Lights Cookies served on a white tray

Why You’ll ♡ This

  • Fun to make for the whole family.
  • Easy to customize and make your own unique design.
  • Perfect for parties, bazaars, cookie exchanges, treats, etc.

Tools Needed

Soooo, let’s gather up our ingredients and I will show you….

How To Make Christmas Light Cookies

Get the complete ingredients list and instructions from the recipe card below.

The from scratch way….

  1. Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl and set aside. 
  2. Using a stand mixer or hand held mixer, beat butter stick and sugar together until light and fluffy in a large bowl. Add in the egg and vanilla and combine. Stir in your dry ingredients from the medium bowl. 
  3. Shape dough into a flattened ball and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough about an hour, or until chilled. 
  4. Preheat the oven to 325F/163C, while preheating, line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper, and set aside. 
  5. Lightly flour a clean surface and roll out your chilled dough to a quarter-inch thick. Using a cookie cutter, cut out 3-inch rounds and place on your lined baking sheets. Freeze for 30 minutes. 
  6. Bake cookies 16-18 minutes, or until edges are a light golden color. Let cool completely. 
  7. While cookies are cooling, make icing by stirring together powdered sugar, corn syrup, and milk until smooth. Add milk in small increments to thin if necessary. 
  8. Using a spoon, frost each cookie with about 1 Tablespoon of icing. Use the back of the spoon to smooth the icing in an even, smooth circle. 
  9. Using your black decorating gel, draw you thin lines across the cookies to create a string of lights. Immediately add your M&Ms on the black line to create the colored lights. Let cookies dry and set. 

The store bought cookies way

  1. Assemble your store bought cookies on a cooling rack.
  2. Make icing by stirring together powdered sugar, corn syrup, and milk until smooth. Add milk in small increments to thin if necessary. 
  3. Using a spoon, frost each cookie with about 1 Tablespoon of icing. Use the back of the spoon to smooth the icing in an even, smooth circle. 
  4. Using your black decorating gel, draw you thin lines across the cookies to create a string of lights. Immediately add your M&Ms on the black line to create the colored lights. Let cookies dry and set. 
image collage showing the steps for making these decorated Christmas cookies

Recipe Tips

  • If you don’t have mini M&M’s, you can use the regular size or swap in other colored candies. 
  • For even easier Christmas cookies, skip the baking from scratch and use a store-bought mix or premade cookies to decorate instead.
  • Let the white icing dry fully before using black writing gel to draw the light strands.
  • Once you’ve added the gel, place the M&Ms on immediately, and push into the gel so they stick.
some of the decorated cookies on a countertop

Recipe Variations

These adorable festive cookies are easily customizable. You can add different candies to customize the look of each cookie. You can even trade out other parts of this recipe to change things altogether. 

  • Swap the cookies: make peanut butter cookies, gingersnaps, or shortbread.
  • Change out the icing flavors: add a flavoring to the icing, such as almond extract, peppermint extract, or orange extract.
  • Change out the icing: make your own royal icing, use melted white chocolate, or buttercream frosting. Just remember that different frosting may be harder to decorate. 
  • Use different candies: instead of M&Ms, try using chocolate covered sunflower seeds or small nuts. Of you can skip the candy and pipe on the lights using colored frosting or writing gel. 
  • Use different cookie cutters: use a Christmas Tree cookie cutter and decorate with the light strands and a star topper.
top down view of the decorated cookies on a cooling rack

Storage

Store these Christmas cookies in an airtight container for up to a week. But if your house is anything like mine, there’s no way they’ll last long without being eaten. 

Chef’s Tip ==> put a piece of bread in the container along with the cookies to help keep them nice and soft. 

If you make these cookies ahead of time and store them in an airtight container, wait to add the icing and decorating them until you’re ready to enjoy them. 

FAQs

How to Use These For Edible Gifting?

These cookies make for a super awesome edible gift. Whip up a couple of batches, decant into mason jars, add a ribbon and a label and hand out to all your foodie family and friends. #ediblegiftsforthewin

one of the Christmas Light Cookies served on a white plate

Fill a large tray or platter with an assortment of Christmas cookies. I love to include a variety of colorful cookies with different flavors and textures for maximum appeal. For a truly festive cookie tray, try pairing these Christmas Lights Cookies with my cute Melted Snowman Cookies, some Chocolate Crinkle Cookies, and classic Crockpot Christmas Candy. #christmascookietray

top down view of a Christmas cookie tray filled with different types of cookies.

More Christmas Recipes

Weight Watchers Points 

There are 9 Blue Plan SmartPoints in one serving.

Thank you for reading my Christmas Lights Cookies recipe post. And please come visit again as I continue to slice, dice and dream up affordable Air Fryer recipes, Instant Pot Recipes, Southern Recipes and more. Thanks for supporting Recipes from a Pantry, food blog.

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the completed Christmas Light Cookies ready to serve
Print Recipe
5 from 5 votes

Easy Christmas Light Cookies

These festive cookies are fun to make and perfect for holiday cookie swaps, parties and gifting!
Prep Time15 minutes
Cook Time18 minutes
chilling time30 minutes
Total Time1 hour 3 minutes
Course: Dessert, Edible Gifts
Cuisine: American, Western
Servings: 24 cookies
Calories: 174kcal
Author: Bintu Hardy

Ingredients

FOR THE COOKIES

  • 2 cups (240g) all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/2 cup (113g) butter
  • 1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

FOR THE ICING

  • 2 cups (240g) powdered sugar
  • 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
  • 2 tablespoons plus 1 tsp. milk
  • back decorating gel
  • 1/2 cup (152g) mini M&Ms

Instructions

  • Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl and set aside.
  • Using a mixer, beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy in a large bowl. Add in the egg and vanilla and combine. Stir in your dry ingredients from the medium bowl.
  • Shape dough into a flattened ball and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough about an hour, or until chilled.
  • Preheat the oven to 325F/163C, while preheating, line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
  • Lightly flour a clean surface and roll out your chilled dough to a quarter-inch thick. Using a cookie cutter, cut out 3” rounds and place on your lined baking sheets. Freeze for 30 minutes.
  • Bake cookies 16-18 minutes, or until edges are a light golden color. Let cool completely.
  • While cookies are cooling, make icing by stirring together powdered sugar, corn syrup and milk until smooth. Add milk in small increments to thin if necessary.
  • Using a spoon, frost each cookie with about 1 Tablespoon of icing. Use the back of the spoon to smooth the icing in an even, smooth circle.
  • Using your black decorating gel, draw you thin lines across the cookies to create a string of lights. Immediately add your M&Ms on the black line to create the colored lights. Let cookies dry and set.
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Notes

Recipe slightly adapted from Delish.
  • If you don’t have mini M&M’s, you can use the regular size or swap in other colored candies. 
  • For even easier Christmas cookies, skip the baking from scratch and use a store-bought mix or premade cookies to decorate instead.
  • Let the white icing dry fully before using black writing gel to draw the light strands.
  • Once you’ve added the gel, place the M&Ms on immediately, and push into the gel so they stick.
There are 9 Blue Plan SmartPoints in one serving.
 

Nutrition

Calories: 174kcal | Carbohydrates: 31g | Protein: 2g | Fat: 5g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Cholesterol: 18mg | Sodium: 90mg | Potassium: 26mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 22g | Vitamin A: 138IU | Calcium: 15mg | Iron: 1mg

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Recipe Rating




5 Comments

  1. These are my kids favorite.. I always buy them.from.store. thanks for your well explained recipe… definitely.make them soon at home.

  2. 5 stars
    These look so delicious and fun! My kids are going to love making these with me! Can’t wait!

  3. 5 stars
    Oh, Bintu – these are so, so cute! Simple to make, but just adorable! Great ideas, too, on using this same technique on other holiday cookies like gingersnaps, and also on adding flavors like peppermint or almond (my favorite!) to the icing. So much inspiration here – thank you!

  4. 5 stars
    These cookies look so beautiful!! I’m in love with the Christmas tree decoration, very creative! I’ll definitely copy your idea 🙂 Thank you!