Basic Holiday Butter Cookies

This is a keeper butter cookie recipe designed to be your go-to base for holiday baking. The dough is sturdy enough to roll and cut into shapes but bakes up tender and fine-grained, thanks to the cornstarch mixed into the flour. That starch replaces some of the gluten-forming flour, giving the cookies a delicate, almost shortbread-like texture.

Using both butter and shortening is deliberate. The butter brings flavor, while the shortening helps the cookies hold their shape during baking so your snowflakes and stars don’t spread into blobs. Egg yolks only (no whites) keep the dough rich and golden without adding too much structure or chewiness.

The recipe divides into four disks, so you can bake one batch now and freeze the rest for up to a year. That’s holiday planning done right.

Kitchen Tips

• Beat the butter and shortening for a full 3-5 minutes until genuinely fluffy. This aerates the dough and determines how light the cookies turn out.
• Fold the flour in gently in three additions. Overmixing develops gluten and makes the cookies tough instead of tender.
• Chill the dough disks before rolling. Warm dough sticks to everything and the cookies will spread more.
• Transfer cookies to a rack immediately after baking. Leaving them on the hot sheet continues cooking the bottoms.

Variations

• Add a teaspoon of almond extract alongside the vanilla for a more complex flavor.
• Press a thumbprint into each cookie before baking and fill with jam after cooling.
• Decorate with royal icing for classic frosted holiday cutouts.