These adorable Christmas Light Cookies are a fun and festive holiday treat that are so easy to make and bring guaranteed cheer to your kitchen!
With easy prep and fun decoration, Christmas light bulb cookies are a great addition to any cookie swap or holiday dessert platter.
These amazing Christmas cookies are simple to bake and include an adorable decoration that looks exactly like strands of cheerful Christmas lights!
These festive cookies are so easy to decorate!
Why You’ll Love Christmas Lights Cookies
Adorable and delicious, these Christmas themed cookies are a must-try for the holiday season!
Homemade sugar cookie dough serves as a base for a sweet royal icing and festive Christmas light decorations. These cookies are a perfect family activity, so get the kids involved and let them decorate their own!
With a little bit of chocolate flavor from the mini M&Ms, you’ll have a hard time not eating through a whole light string’s worth of these cookies!
Completely made from scratch, you’ll love the nostalgic flavor of authentic sugar cookies paired with the pretty decoration. Guests and family will love these, and they’re great for bringing along with a plate of this So Easy Fudge to cookie swaps or Christmas parties.
Break out your mixing bowl and preheat the oven and get ready for your whole house to smell like heaven! Leave them out with some milk, or give Santa an extra treat and pair them with some Christmas Mimosas!
Add this pretty Pretzel Wreath (no bake!) to your holiday table! These Green and Red Christmas Jello shots are a festive addition to a holiday party.
Christmas Light Cookies Ingredients
You likely have many of these ingredients in your kitchen already!
Cookie Ingredients
- Flour – serves as the base for your sugar cookies.
- Baking Powder – ensures your cookies are light and tender.
- Salt – balances out the sweet flavors.
- Butter – makes your cookies nice and moist and gives them a delicious buttery flavor.
- Sugar – to sweeten your cookies.
- Egg Yolk – acts as a binding agent for the cookie dough.
- Vanilla – adds some extra sweetness and a delicious vanilla flavor.
- Almond Extract – works well with the vanilla flavoring and gives your cookies another layer of flavor.
Icing Ingredients
- Powdered Sugar – when mixed with a few wet ingredients, powdered sugar forms the perfect royal icing!
- Fresh Lemon Juice – gives your icing a balance of sweet and tart.
- Egg White – ensures that the icing will dry hard after it’s been spread onto the cookies.
Cookie Decoration Ingredients
- Small Tube of Black Icing – this will act as the “strings” for the string lights.
- M&M’s – cut in half, M&Ms are the perfect shape to be colorful light bulbs!
How to Make Christmas Light Cookies
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a medium or small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.
- In a separate bowl, cream together the softened butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolk, vanilla, and almond extract, then mix until combined.
Cream together the wet ingredients until everything is nice and fluffy.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet in portions, mixing just until combined.
Adding the dry ingredients in smaller portions ensures the dough is well combined.
- Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead, then collect into a ball. Roll out the dough into a ½ inch thick layer.
Make sure you roll out the dough thin enough to cut out at least 12 cookies!
- Using a cookie cutter, cut out 12 circles from the dough.
Any kind of cookie cutter works well for cutting these cookies into shapes. You can also experiment with other shapes!
- Place cookies on a prepared baking sheet with parchment paper and bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, or until lightly golden. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Baking on parchment makes cleanup much easier.
How to Make Icing and Decorate
- Combine lemon juice with egg white and powdered sugar and mix until smooth.
- Spread the royal icing on each cookie, either by using a spatula or by flooding the cookies. An offset spatula like this works great for this. Allow the icing to harden entirely.
Flooding the cookies instead of using a spatula can lead to more even and consistent decorations.
- Decorate by squeezing lines of black frosting on top of the hardened icing. Cut the M&Ms in half and place them at even intervals to look like Christmas lights. Serve alongside Christmas Tree Spinach Dip Breadsticks or a Christmas Tree Cake for a cute and festive snack!
FAQs
What does it mean to flood a cookie?
This technique is done specifically with royal icing or other thin frostings. The technique involves creating a dam of icing and then “flooding” the cookie with a consistent layer of icing, which can be easier than spreading icing on and also yields more clean and consistent results.
How do you flood Christmas cookies?
Transfer your royal icing to a piping bag. Cut a very small hole and outline the cookies with icing, ensuring that this outline dries before continuing.
Then cut a slightly larger hole and squeeze a larger amount of frosting into the outline, ensuring there’s enough to cover the surface. You may need to use an offset spatula or other flat tool to help the frosting spread evenly.
Save to your Pinterest board.
Do I have to use royal icing for these Christmas Light Cookies?
Not necessarily! It provides a nice solid base for the string light decorations, but you could also use a softer frosting like buttercream or vanilla frosting if you want a softer topping for your cookies.
Popular Variations and Substitutions
- Use a Christmas light cookie cutter shape to add another layer of decoration to your cookies.
- If you don’t want to bother cutting the M&Ms, mini M&Ms may be a good substitute if embedded in the royal icing so they have the correct shape. Place the minis in the white frosting before it dries, then once hardened, pipe the lines of darker frosting.
- The light of the strings can also be made with some royal icing dyed with black food coloring, or you can melt some chocolate wafers and pipe that on instead if you want even more chocolate flavor.
- If you’re feeling adventurous, try piping some green frosting using a fun shaped frosting tip to look like Christmas tree branches among the lights.
- Serve alongside another snack like Dark Chocolate Peppermint Popcorn or a festive cocktail like our Cranberry Apple Mimosas.
Pair your Christmas Light Cookies with some hot cocoa and enjoy this fun and adorable holiday treat!
Christmas Light Decorated Cookies
Christmas Light Cookies
You'll love these homemade sugar cookies topped with sweet royal icing and decorated to look like Christmas string lights!
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup flour
- 1/2 tsp Baking powder
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 1/4 cup Butter , softened
- 1/4 cup Sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- 1/2 tsp Vanilla
- 1/4 tsp Almond extract
Icing:
- 1 cup Powdered sugar
- 2 tsp Lemon juice
- 2 Tbsp. Egg white
Decorations:
- Black Icing (small tube)
- M&M's
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- In a bowl, mix together the flour, salt and baking powder.
- In another bowl, cream together butter and sugar.
- Add egg yolk, vanilla and almond extract and stir well.
- Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in stages, stirring between.
- Knead the dough together and form a ball.
- On a floured surface, roll out the dough ball into a layer ½ inch thick.
- Use the cookie cutter to make 12 circles, laying these on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
- Bake the cookies in the oven for 10-12 minutes.
- Remove and let cool completely before icing.
Icing
- For icing mix lemon juice and egg white together well.
- Slowly add sifted powdered sugar.
- Keep stirring well, until thick and smooth.
Decorating
- Use the tube of black icing to form the strands of the Christmas lights.
- Add the colored M&M's to the strands, setting them in on edge.
Notes
- Use fun Christmas light shaped cutters to add another layer to your cookie decorations.
- Melted chocolate or royal icing dyed black can be used instead of the decorating frosting.
- Use mini M&Ms to avoid having to cut the M&Ms, which can be a bit tedious!
- This decoration works on top of any kind of flat cookies, so don't be afraid to try it on chocolate cookies. You could even fold some M&Ms into the cookie dough before baking to add more color!
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
12Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 154Total Fat: 6gSaturated Fat: 3gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 2gCholesterol: 26mgSodium: 113mgCarbohydrates: 24gFiber: 0gSugar: 18gProtein: 2g