As you may have read in the Thanksgiving 2025 post, my cookie list was so long, I made two of them for Thanksgiving. But as you will read below, there were still plenty of cookies for Christmas. All of the sweet treats were new-to-me recipes, except the frosting, and everything turned out great! Also, all of these treats were frozen after they were baked and still tasted great with good texture once they defrost for just a little bit.

I made my sugar cookies decorated with frosting; however, both the cookie and frosting recipes were from Cookies for Days. You know I’m a big fan of this cookbook so I wanted to try her Roll and Cut Sugar Cookies. I made two batches of cookies which made about 6 dozen cookies. The cookies tasted great and had a nice vanilla flavor. The dough was very easy to roll out and cut out - not too sticky and very pliable. They were soft when you take them out of the oven per her cues (even though they look underdone, but they aren’t). I also made 4 batches of her My Favorite Sugar Cookie Frosting, but three probably would have been enough (but I don’t like having to make more frosting in the middle of decorating). This frosting is not royal icing so you can’t be as precise; however, it does hold its shape and gets a little crust (in a good way) so you can still make some decoration. I like it better because it actually tastes good, which to me is more important than looks. My sister-in-law and nieces also brought over a few dozen sugar cookies and royal icing so we got the best of both worlds! I think our decorating gets better and better every year! (Don’t mind my blurry pics below - I only took a video so these are taken as screenshots from the video.)

Another recipe from Cookies for Days that I baked were the Chocolate Orange Cookies which has one of my favorite combos of chocolate and orange. They use a half slice of the chocolate oranges that you find only around Christmas. I used one milk chocolate orange and one dark chocolate orange candies.

I made the White Chocolate Peppermint Cookies from The Merry Cookie Lover which is the same author as Cookies for Days. These cookies had a really nice amount of peppermint. I did use hard peppermint candies broken into really small pieces since I had some left over (she recommends those soft peppermint candies).

I made Cookie Dough Fudge from, you guessed it, Cookies for Days. I don’t know if I’ve ever made fudge before, if I have, it’s been many years. This was really easy to make! It was rich like most fudges but not overly rich that you can’t eat the whole small piece.

I got to make three types of candied nuts in Pampered Chef Electric Pop and Stir. I made French toast pecans, sugared cinnamon walnuts, & cocoa cinnamon sugar almonds. These were fun and fast to make in the Pampered Chef electric pop and stir. I need to make these again just for any day as a nice little snack.

The last sweets I made were from “Gifts from a Jar: Muffins, Breads, & Scones.” I found this cookbook at an antique mall and noticed that it had tear-out recipe cards to give jar mixes as gifts. I made 3 sets of jars - one for a work gift exchange, one for a friend’s birthday, and one for me. I made the granola spice muffins, double chocolate walnut bread, and cranberry raisin nut bread.

At my work’s holiday party gift swap, I stole from someone an ugly Christmas sweater cookie decorating kit and a sugar cookie candle. These were already baked so I just took the time to decorate them with the frosting and sprinkles that came in the kit. And funnily enough the person whose gift I got, was the person who stole my gift. From one baker to another!

For Christmas Eve dinner there was beef tenderloin, yeast rolls, and twice baked potatoes. I made the roasted cauliflower with fried sage & hazelnuts from Cooking in Real Life cookbook. This recipe was an easy way to make cauliflower more tasty and add some interest to it. It made the cauliflower a little extra special.

For Christmas dinner junk food plate, I made my Grandma Lengerich’s cheeseball which is in The Cookbook Cook’s Family Cookbook. My siblings and I have called this meal “junk food plate” which consists of crackers, prepared meats, cheeses, olives, and other little bites. Nowadays, this is called charcuterie, but in the 80’s and 90’s, it was junk food plate.

Lastly I made the English muffin breakfast bake from Cooking in Real Life just to have a little extra special breakfast for the days between Christmas and New Year’s. It reheats well in the microwave or popped into a toaster oven. It also freezes well if you are tired of it before it’s gone.

What special foods do you have for the holidays?

Christmas 2025