No-Roll Christmas Sugar Cookies

A quick and easy Christmas butter cookie, chewy, colorful and festive. They are just two bites big and taste like the very best sugar cookies – except without the fuss and mess of rolling! Looking for easy color for your Christmas cookie plate? Get out the butter and let's get to baking!

Homemade Sugar Cookies, Made from Scratch. Real Food, Fresh & Family-Tested. Budget Friendly. Great for Food Gifts & Cookie Boxes.

~ Skip Straight to the Recipe ~

COMPLIMENTS!

• "" ~
• "... almost identical to one I got ... about 30 years ago ... have made at least 10 batches a year ever since." ~ Laurie
• "They turned out perfect, so easy." ~ Anonymous
• "... they disappeared quick and got rave reviews!" ~ Arlene

BEST RECIPES!

• No-Roll Christmas Sugar Cookies Made the List!
• Best Recipes of 2011

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Introducing the Real Food Celebrities

Forget big-name chefs and hot-shot TV-food personalities. The real food celebrities are the countless home cooks who put healthy affordable meals on the table seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

You know, like you. YOU.

Enter Food52, the website and new cookbook (affiliate link) but most importantly, the first organization to coax the best recipes from the best home cooks in an organized fashion.

During its first year, Food52 offered two or three seasonal challenges each week.

In summer, it was “Send us your best corn chowder recipe” and in winter, “Send us your best baked ham recipe”. Home cooks did send their best recipes – responding in droves, especially as word got out.

Each week, Food52 and a growing community of contributors and followers somehow tested each challenge’s recipes and selected just one as “best”.

And then they published The Food52 Cookbook, what Food52 founders and cookbook editors Amanda Hesser (she of Cooking for Mr. Latte fame) and Merrill Stubbs call the “love child of 52 weeks of recipe contests”.

And it’s fabulous.

• The cookbook is organized by season, just one recipe per challenge.
• The recipes are almost always practical and often inventive.
• They’re filled with insider tips and suggestions, the ones a friend would pass along when sharing her own recipe.

I like to think that most of these recipes would fit into Kitchen Parade like butter slides onto hot toast.

A Secret No More.

At Food52, what I call No-Roll Christmas Sugar Cookies are called “Secret Cookies”.

• They are so simple that I really do recommend fresh butter and even fresh flour.
• They are unleavened, no baking powder or baking soda is required, perfect for someone who's run out and still wants to bake cookies!
• They’re easy to mix, require no chilling before baking and add color to a cookie tray.
• The buttery taste makes this a delicious butter cookie!
• The pretty colored sugars make this a festive sugar cookie!
• The chewy texture makes it my favorite kinda cookie!

DISCLOSURE Many cookies were sacrificed in order to form these opinions. Do not let their demise go unappreciated.

Kids and cousins? Grownups and grandpas? Everyone loves ‘em!

Bookmark! PIN! Share!

How do you save and share favorite recipes? recipes that fit your personal cooking style? a particular recipe your mom or daughter or best friend would just love? If these colorful butter cookies hit the mark, go ahead, save and share! I'd be honored ...

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NO-ROLL CHRISTMAS SUGAR COOKIES

Hands-on time: 45 minutes
Time to table: 1 hour
Makes 3 dozen small two-bite cookies (easily doubled but a triple batch is too much for my stand mixer)

• 12 tablespoons (1-1/2 sticks, 170g) salted butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar (175g)
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
• 1-3/4 cup flour, fluffed to aerate before measuring or 218g

• Colored sugars – red, green or a mix

Heat oven to 350F/180C with the oven rack in the center-most position.

In a mixing bowl, use an electric mixer to blend the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the yolk and extract and combine well. Add the flour and combine well but just until fully mixed, you're not adding air to the dough.

Roll the cookie dough into balls (for one-inch balls, that's 12 grams, for two-bite cookies, make larger balls for larger cookies) and arrange quite close together (they spread just a little) to fill an ungreased baking sheet.

Hunt through the cupboards and china cabinet to find a glass with a patterned bottom – here, my grandmother’s sugar bowl worked perfectly. A smooth-bottomed glass also works but a pattern helps hold the sugar and if you’re really lucky (I wasn’t) the sugar will impress the pattern into the dough.

Rub the bottom of the glass with a little butter. Place the colored sugars on small plates, one color per plate. Dip the bottom of the glass into a colored sugar, then gently and evenly press the glass to flatten the cookie until, well, it’s flatter and squatter (like a thick button) but neither thin nor flat.

Bake for about 10 - 15 minutes or until the cookies are baked clear through and the bottoms are crisp and golden. Let cool for five minutes, transfer to paper towels on the counter to cool completely. Transfer to a storage container.

Delicious immediately but over a few days, the buttery flavor and chewy texture continue to develop.

BAKING SHEETS These cookies were tested bare and baked perfectly in 13 minutes on my favorite thirty-year old non-stick baking sheet (sorry, no one is sorrier than I that it’s no longer available since I've misplaced one) and Airbake cookie sheets, also on a metal baking sheet topped with a silicone mat. The Airbakes took several additional minutes to bake and even then, the bottoms were pale. This is why I recommend baking these cookies on ungreased baking sheets, this lets the bottoms turn crisp and golden instead of staying pale and pallid.

SHIPPING I think these cookies would be a good candidate for shipping. First, they're small and sturdy, unlikely to break, but just as importantly, the flavors continue to develop over a few days.

ALANNA's TIPS What? No baking powder or baking soda? That's right. These cookies are unleavened. If you want sugar on all sides, roll each ball in colored sugar, then flatten. Dark-colored sugars show up best; yellow, say, doesn’t contrast enough. I don't recommend making this dough ahead of time. Either refrigerated or left out, the texture changes somehow and the dough is harder to work with and the cookies lack the crisp definition that make them so special. Is this cookie a Scandinavian butter cookie in disguise? Made with almond extract instead of vanilla, No-Roll Christmas Sugar Cookies remind me of a simple unleavened butter cookie that I learned to bake in a home ec class while living in Finland.

FOR MORE INFO If you "skipped straight to the recipe," please scroll back to the top of this page for ingredient information, ingredient substitutions, tips and more. If you print this recipe, you'll want to check the recipe online for even more tips and extra information about ingredient substitutions, best results and more. See https://www.kitchenparade.com/2011/12/no-roll-christmas-sugar-cookies.html .

NUTRITION INFORMATION Per Cookie: 82 Calories; 4g Tot Fat; 2g Sat Fat; 15mg Cholesterol; 27mg Sodium; 11g Carb; 0g Fiber; 6g Sugar; 1g Protein. WEIGHT WATCHERS Old Points 2 & PointsPlus 2 & SmartPoints 4 & Freestyle 4 & myWW green 4 & blue 4 & purple 4 & future WW points

Adapted from the fabulous Food52 Cookbook, a curated collection of "best of my best" recipes from home cooks, it's The Food52 Cookbook: 140 Winning Recipes from Exceptional Home Cooks (affiliate link) by Amanda Hesser, Merrill Stubbs & the Food52 Community. DISCLOSURE The good folks at Harper Collins sent a complimentary copy of The Food52 Cookbook and provided a giveaway copy for Kitchen Parade readers in 2011. The opinions, as always, are my own. My Disclosure Promise

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Seasonal Cooking: Anyone Else Up to the Elbows in Sugar and Flour?

Frosty Christmas Trees Homemade Microwave Caramel Corn Gourmet Chocolate Mocha Cookies Graham Cracker Toffee Cranberry-Mac Morsels Butter Tart Bars Perfect M&M Cookies Sesame Candy Fresh Cranberry Drop Cookies Chocolate Ginger Crinkle Cookies Colored Roll-Out Sugar Cookies Holiday Baking Tips from a Certifiable Cookie-Baking Fiend No-Roll Christmas Sugar Cookies Bourbon Pralines Slice 'n' Bake Coffee Cookies with Chocolate-Covered Espresso Beans Fresh Cranberry Cake Chocolate-Almond Shortbread Cookies Christmas Banana Bread Fresh Cranberry Bars Old-Fashioned Chocolate Chip Cookies Family Shortbread Cranberry Walnut Bread

This Week, Elsewhere

~ Veritas Vegetable Soup ~
from Veritas Gateway to Food & Wine
~ more St. Louis Restaurant Recipes ~
My Weekly Column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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More Cookies for Christmas Cookie Plates

~ Holiday Baking Tips ~
from a Certifiable Cookie-Baking Fiend

more
~ Christmas recipes ~

• THE RECIPE Frosty Christmas Trees Gingerbread spices with a touch of chocolate, easy to handle.
• ANOTHER TAKE No-Chill Cutout Sugar Cookies Just mix and roll, no need to wait.

• THE RECIPE Perfect M&M Cookies First grabbed, first to disappear.
• ANOTHER TAKE Snickers Cookies on Sticks (or NOT) Peanut butter cookies with mini Snickers bars wrapped inside.

• THE RECIPE No-Chill Cutout Sugar Cookies Just mix and roll, no need to wait.
• ANOTHER TAKE Cut-Out Spice Cookies My all-time year-round favorite cut-out cookie dough recipe.

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Shop Your Pantry First

(helping home cooks save money on groceries)

~ leftover egg whites ~
~ leftover egg yolks ~

~ All Recipes, By Ingredient ~
~ How to Save Money on Groceries ~

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Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail, you'll find my current address in the FAQs. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, for more scratch cooking recipes using whole, healthful ingredients, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. If you make this recipe, I'd love to know your results! Just leave a comment below.

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