36 christmas cake recipes

When you taste these homemade gingersnap cookies, you will fall in love with them, and never buy the store-bought bagged or boxed stuff any more. They are so delicious.

These delicious fruitcake cookies are ideal sweets for Christmas.

Chewy molasses drop cookies loaded with candied fruit and warm spices like cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, and allspice. These colorful Christmas Jewels look like stained glass on a cookie platter.

Sturdy gingerbread dough engineered for building. Stiff enough to hold its shape, deeply spiced with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg, ready for cookie houses, churches, and edible structures.

Fortune Christmas Cookies, tiny marble-sized dough balls baked into bite-sized holiday treats. A simple, quick-baking variation of the Mysticandy cookie dough for the Christmas tin.

Chocolate-dipped pretzels with white chocolate drizzle. Four-ingredient Christmas treat that comes together in under an hour, no oven required. Salty-sweet, beginner-friendly, gift-tin ready.

A classic chocolate souffle from Eunice Kennedy Shriver's kitchen, made with unsweetened chocolate, a touch of coffee, and billowy whipped egg whites. Elegant enough for any holiday table.

Holiday gingersnaps with crackled sugar tops, deep molasses warmth, and a full tablespoon of ground ginger for serious snap. Chilled dough rolls into tidy balls that bake up crisp at the edges and chewy in the center.

Santa Claus cookies decorate flat sugar cookies with red sugar caps, miniature marshmallow tassels, currant eyes, cinnamon candy noses, and coconut beards. A festive holiday craft cookie kids can help build from baked rounds.

Fry bread with all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, and cornmeal for a hearty, golden crust. Deep-fried until puffy and crisp, served with honey or maple syrup.

Let your garden become a part of your baking skills with these rich biscuits.

Green-and-white peppermint pinwheel cookies, sliced from a swirled frozen log. A classic Christmas icebox cookie with spiraled layers of vanilla and mint dough.

Easy elephant ears cookies (palmiers) bake from rolled puff pastry, sugar, and egg wash into crisp golden hearts, dipped in melted chocolate. Four-ingredient bakery-style treats ready in 40 minutes.

Santa Claus cookies are soft drop cookies with bright lemon zest, baked then frosted and decorated into jolly Santa faces. A Christmas cookie tray classic for kids.

Soft cream cheese cookies studded with pecans and swirled with apricot preserves, topped with matching apricot frosting and coconut for pillowy sweetness.

Pfefferkuchen, a German honey spice cake with whole wheat flour, coffee, cinnamon, cloves, and rum, glazed while hot. A traditional Christmas cookie bar that stays soft for weeks.