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This sugar cookie recipe gives you beautiful, golden sugar cookies, that can be soft and chewy or crispy, depending on how long you cook them.
I particularly like this recipe for Christmas because they’re simple drop cookies. My other Christmas dessert recipes are a bit more time consuming, so this one is a nice break. And since I already have rolled out and shaped gingerbread cookies, the round cookies actually add variety!
Simple, easy, delicious!
If you’re looking for cut-out cookies to cut into fun Christmas shapes, try this easy sugar cookie recipe.
Preparation Time: 15m Cooking Time: 10m Total Time: 25m
Yields 30 cookies.
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/4 cups white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
Home › Christmas Dessert RecipesSkip Ahead to Christmas Dessert Recipes
I love pretty much anything that has to do with Christmas. The decorations, the lights, the family togetherness, the spirit of giving, and the food! And even though all the food is wonderful, Christmas dessert recipes have a special place in my heart.
I’ve always loved to bake. I didn’t really start cooking until a bit before leaving my parents’ house, but I’ve been baking as long as I can remember.
And there’s no baking I love more than Christmas baking!
For me, it’s just not Christmas without lots and lots of different desserts. And it’s not even just so that we can pig out – although let’s be honest, we do.
It’s really about the variety, having lots of beautiful desserts, and being able to sample a bit of each.
But making all those different desserts means that you need a good plan. If you wake up on the 24th and decide you want to have 6 different homemade desserts, you’ll be in trouble. Luckily, a lot of delicious Christmas desserts are awesome even if you make them weeks ahead of time.
So read on. First, we’ll talk about different ways to make desserts ahead of time. And then, we’ll get to the good stuff: Christmas baking and dessert recipes.
We always have a lot of desserts around Christmas time in my family. My mom and I each make 3 or 4 different kinds, and we’ll usually buy a cake or yule log, and have a whole bunch of little extras like peppermint patties or chocolate covered almonds.
It might seem like a lot of desserts, but we eat them over a few different meals. Christmas Eve, Christmas day, New Year’s, and pretty much any gathering in the middle. And it’s just so pretty to have a plate full of lots of different treats.
And of course, each one of those desserts is a part of the tradition and if we didn’t make them all, something would just be missing. So how do we manage all those desserts?
A lot of Christmas desserts freeze really well, which means that you can make them way ahead of time. So instead of having to make a whole bunch of Christmas baking recipes the week before Christmas, you can spread out the baking work all throughout the month of December.
Whenever you have the time, just bring out those Christmas dessert recipes, make the treats, then wrap them carefully and freeze them. Some desserts that freeze really well are:
Not all Christmas desserts freeze well, but the ones that do can be made ahead of time. If you wrap them carefully, they can last over a month in the freezer.
The refrigerator can also be a big help when you’re planning out your Christmas dessert recipe schedule. Some foods might not freeze very well, but sometimes they can stay in the fridge for a few days, without a problem. Some examples are:
If your favorite Christmas dessert recipe doesn’t really lend itself to freezing or refrigerating, there’s still hope.
There are a lot of Christmas candy recipes or other types of desserts that store really well just in an airtight container. And then’s there the bonus of not using up fridge or freezer space — which around the holidays is very, very valuable.
Here are some good candidates for airtight storage:
When you’re choosing your Christmas dessert recipes, it’s not a bad idea to pick a few you can freeze, a few you can store, and a few that can be made fresh. That way, you spread out the work. Plan ahead, and you’ll have a much more relaxing holiday.
Well, now that you’ve got a good idea of how to plan things out so that you can have way too many different kinds of Christmas desserts, you need some recipes. A lot of these are the Christmas dessert recipes we’ve used in my family forever.
It’s not Christmas without a few good Christmas cookie recipes. Cookies are great because they’re easy to make, easy to store, and decorating them is a ton of fun.
My mom is always the one in charge of bar cookies. Every so often, she’ll say we make too many desserts and suggests removing one recipe from the menu, but someone always vetoes that!
There’s nothing like some yummy Christmas candy recipes. Something to nibble on during the day, a sweet little treat here and there.
Having a nice variety of Christmas baking recipes is awesome. You end up with lots of delicious holiday treats. But remember, having a fun, relaxing holiday is important, too. So plan ahead — you’ll get all the treats without the stress.
Enjoy!
I make these every year for Christmas, and they’re always a huge hit. Everyone is surprised that they’re homemade, and usually follow up the stunned look by asking for the recipe.
Now, this recipe is just a basic recipe for chocolate truffles. But it’s super flexible. Using orange extract instead of vanilla makes amazing orange truffles with a completely different flavor. You can use milk or dark chocolate, whichever you prefer. You can turn this into the perfect chocolate truffle recipe for you! See the tips section for more ideas, or this article on making chocolate truffles.
One little note though — this chocolate truffle recipe can’t magically transform regular chocolate into gourmet chocolate. If you use plain old chocolate chips from the grocery store, that’s what the truffles will taste like. So it’s worth putting in a few extra dollars for better chocolate. You’ll still get very thrifty chocolate truffles.
Preparation Time: 20m Cooking Time: 10m Total Time: 30m
Yields 30 truffles.
2 cups high quality chocolate chips
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
But gourmet chocolate covered strawberries can be pretty expensive. And that makes them seem like they must be really hard to make, but in fact, it’s one of the easiest desserts you could possibly make.
Chocolate covered strawberries are just that – strawberries covered in chocolate. If you have chocolate and strawberries, you have just about everything you need. Still, there are a few tricks to making them. Nothing complicated or hard to do, but if you don’t know them, it can make things a bit more difficult.
In this article, I’ll go over everything you need to know to make perfect and delicious chocolate covered strawberries. First, I’ll talk about picking and preparing the strawberries. Then, I’ll go over how to prepare the chocolate. Finally, I’ll talk about dipping the strawberries in chocolate and storing them.
Delicious chocolate strawberries start with delicious strawberries. Chocolate is really forgiving. Even if you don’t have the best strawberries in the world, dipping them in chocolate makes up for a lot. But still, the better your strawberries, the better they’ll be as chocolate covered strawberries. Here are some tips for picking and preparing your strawberries.
The very first step when you make chocolate covered strawberries is to pick out your strawberries. Here’s what you should consider when selecting the berries.
Strawberries are best when they’re in season. They don’t have a very long shelf like, so if they have to be shipped, they’re usually picked under-ripe to make sure they still look good when they get to your store.
Once you’ve picked out delicious, ripe strawberries, you need to get them ready for dipping. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
Once your strawberries are picked out and prepared, you can start thinking about the chocolate!
Getting the chocolate right is the most important part about making chocolate strawberries. Depending on how you do it, though, there are a few factors that’ll affect how your chocolate turns out, like how cold your house is.
In this section, I’ll go over what kind of chocolate to pick, and two different ways of melting the chocolate for coating: tempering, and simple melting.
The nice thing about making your own chocolate strawberries is that you get to choose just how to make them. You can pick the nicest strawberries, and you can also pick your very favorite kind of chocolate! Here’s what you should consider when picking your chocolate.
Once you’ve picked out a chocolate, it’s time to figure out how to melt it.
Tempering chocolate is a special and very cool cooking technique for melting chocolate. Tempered chocolate hardens to a firm, shiny finish that doesn’t melt at room temperature, or get sticky in your hands. If you want to make chocolate strawberries that look professional, tempered chocolate is the key.
It’s not hard to do, but it does take some explaining. If you decide to go for tempered chocolate, you can read this article on tempering chocolate for all the details.
Tempering chocolate is the key to getting really professional looking chocolate strawberries that don’t melt at room temperature. But if you’re kind of in a rush and have never tempered chocolate before, you might be thinking you want to skip the whole tempering thing.
And that’s totally fine! You can get really good results without tempering. The difference is that your chocolate strawberries might not be as stable. You might have to keep them in the refrigerator, or the chocolate might get a little bit soft after being out for a while – but they’ll still taste great.
If you decide you just want to melt the chocolate, plain and simple, here are a few guidelines to follow:
Just melting the chocolate is a little bit easier than tempering. You might not get the perfect shiny finish that tempering gives, but depending on the heat and humidity of your kitchen you can still get beautiful results. And more importantly, delicious results!
Once you have your strawberries picked out, washed and dried, and your chocolate is melted, it’s time to dip the berries! And nothing could be easier.
Here’s what you do.
Chocolate strawberries definitely do not have a long shelf life. Ideally, you should eat them the same day you make them, although you can store them for about a day if you really, really have to. How you store them depends on a few things.
And that’s how to make chocolate covered strawberries. It’s much easier to do than to explain, and so much more delicious!
Enjoy
Depending on what type of cake you made, you’ll want to use one frosting recipe or another, but one kind of frosting that goes great with lots of cakes is chocolate buttercream frosting.
My personal favorite cake is chocolate cake made from my best chocolate cake recipe, with this easy chocolate frosting recipe. Try it out! You won’t be disappointed.
Here it is!
Preparation Time: 20m Cooking Time: 0m Total Time: 20m
Yields 1 batch frosting for a 9″x13″ cake, or a 2-layer 9″ square or round cake.
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla
4 tbsp milk
3 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted
This recipe calls for the carcass of one roast chicken, but you can easily double or triple it. In fact, if you have lots of freezer space but not a whole lot of time, it’s probably a good idea! Just freeze your chicken carcasses until you have as many as you want, then double or triple the recipe.
I said I use this recipe… but that’s not actually true! I never really use a recipe for chicken stock – I just throw things into the pot! But this recipe is pretty much how I make it.
It’s a very adaptable recipe. You can even use raw chicken bones, or chicken bones from just thighs or drumsticks or anything you happen to have on hand.
If you want to know more about chicken stock, check out our article on making chicken stock. It’ll tell you way more than just a recipe!
Preparation Time: 10m Cooking Time: 6h0m Total Time: 6h10m
Yields 8 cups.
1 carcass of a whole roasted chicken
1 medium carrot, chopped in 2 or 3 chunks
1 celery stalk, chopped in 2 or 3 chunks
1 onion, sliced in half
2 cloves garlic
cold water
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper, to taste
When it’s starting to get cold out, everyone needs a good, easy chicken pot pie recipe. It’s a warm, comforting meal, and it’s a great way to use up chicken leftovers.
There are lots of ways to make a chicken pot pie. If you want the full story, check out our article on making easy chicken pot pie. But I find that this particular chicken pot pie recipe is a great one. It’s very simple, and relies on the natural flavor of the chicken and vegetables rather than a lot of spices.
So go ahead, and try it out! I hope you’ll like it as much as I do.
Preparation Time: 10m Cooking Time: 1h20m Total Time: 1h30m
Serves 6.
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large carrot, diced
1 celery stalk, diced
1 1/2 cups frozen peas, thawed
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups cold milk
2 1/2 cups chicken stock
salt and pepper, to taste
1 pinch of thyme
2 cups cooked chicken, chopped or cubed
crusts for a 2 crust, 9″ deep dish pie
Heat the oil in a large pan over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the onion, garlic, carrot and celery. Saute until the onion is soft and translucent. Set the vegetables aside in a bowl.
Melt the butter in the same pan over medium low heat. Whisk in the flour until the mixture has the texture of smooth, wet sand. Let it simmer for 5-6 minutes, until it loses its raw flour smell.
Slowly add in the milk, whisking constantly to keep the mixture smooth.
Add the chicken stock, salt, pepper, and thyme, and let the mixture simmer for 10 minutes, whisking occasionally to keep it smooth.
Add the cooked vegetables, peas and chicken to the sauce.
Spoon the sauce into one of the pie crusts. Cover with the second crust, and press the edges together. Cut slits in the top crust to allow steam to vent.
Bake in an oven preheated to 375F for 45 minutes, or until the crust is a rich, golden brown.
Let the pie cool for at least 10 minutes, to give the filling time to set.
In this easy chicken pot pie recipe, the flour is the thickener. But things like humidity can affect how well it thickens.
If you find the filling too runny, you can add a bit more flour to the sauce. Just be sure to mix it very, very thoroughly in cold water before adding it to the sauce, to prevent lumping.
Since the filling is already cooked, the only thing that really needs to bake is the crust. Take the pie out whenever the crust is done.
I prefer a chicken pot pie that’s light on spices, but you can easily add your favorite spice to the sauce. Try sage, celery seed, parsley, or any other spice you like.
You can also easily add more chicken, or more vegetables – or less, if that’s what you like. You can also add in different vegetables like mushroom or beans. It’s a very flexible recipe!
I like to use a homemade chicken stock. It adds a lot more flavor than the store-bought kind.
In fact, it ranks pretty highly in my own favorites, too. It’s warm, and very flavorful, but it’s also awesome comfort food. And for me, it brings up some great memories.
One of my best friends growing up was Hungarian, and her mom made real Hungarian chicken paprikash… and it was awesome. I never got the recipe, but years later I decided to find out how to make it. And I came up with this recipe!
It’s been a long time, but it tastes just how I remember it.
I hope you like this chicken paprikash recipe as much as we do!
Preparation Time: 5m Cooking Time: 40m Total Time: 45m
Serves 5.
3 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oil
3 lbs chicken pieces
1 large onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp flour
4 tbsp Hungarian paprika
2 tsp chili powder
1 1/2 cups chicken stock or water
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups sour cream
Go To Chicken Breading Guide — Part II: Breading Chicken
I love breaded chicken. I’m not really sure when that happened. It’s not something we ate a lot of growing up. But for some reason, it’s really grown on me. Now I have to restrain myself to make sure I don’t make it too often!
It’s such a great way to add a little something to your meal. You get a crispy, crunchy, flavorful outside, and a juicy, tender inside. Add a side of fries or mashed potatoes, a salad, and what could be better?
Breading chicken is actually really easy. It involves two simple techniques: dredging and soaking. In Part 1 of this article, I explain what these two techniques are. In Part 2, I give three ways to combine those methods to make delicious chicken breading.
This article is a bit on the long side. But don’t panic! It’s because I go into detail about all the different ways to make chicken breading.
I want you to understand each step. Once you understand why you’re doing something, it’s much easier to remember it, and also a lot easier to modify it to suit your own tastes. And that’s key to cooking up something you love.
If you’re just looking for a recipe, though, try out our oven-fried chicken recipe, or our southern fried chicken recipe.
There’s nothing complicated to dredging chicken. Dredging just means dragging the meat through dry ingredients to get a nice, even coat on it. That’s it!
For chicken breading, here are some dry ingredients you can use:
The simplest one, flour, is the traditional way to make fried chicken.
Dredging your chicken in flour gives a nice, smooth coating. You end up with breaded chicken that’s nice and crispy, but not crumbly or grainy.
Out of all the coatings, flour takes the longest to get crispy. This makes it the best for frying (other coatings can burn before the chicken is cooked). It also means that oven-frying takes a lot longer.
You can use whole wheat flour, too. It won’t change much to the texture, but it has a bit of a different flavor.
My personal favorite for chicken breading, breadcrumbs. Yum!
Breadcrumbs give almost as smooth a coating as flour, but it’s generally a bit thicker and crispier. The crust ends up pretty uniform, since all the breadcrumbs are the same size.
You can also make a coating out of crushed cornflakes.
The best way to crush the cornflakes is to place what you need in a resealable plastic bag and crush them with a rolling pin till they’re as small as you like.
This gives your chicken breading a bit more of a textured crunch. Each crushed cornflake will be a slightly different size. Overall, they’ll be bigger than breadcrumbs, so you’ll get a bigger crunch. It also gives a slightly different flavor to the breading.
Crushed crackers are a lot like crushed cornflakes. But they taste a bit different, generally saltier, and aren’t quite as crunchy.
I also like to season my dry ingredients. The best seasonings to use are dry ones, like cayenne pepper, paprika, granulated garlic, basil, oregano, or even parmesan cheese. Anything that doesn’t alter the texture of the breading too much.
When making breaded chicken, I find that seasoning the breading adds more flavor than seasoning the meat itself. The seasonings in the breading actually come into contact with the heat, and that releases all the wonderful flavors.
There are plenty of good reasons to dredge your chicken. It’s not just there to add an extra step to your meal making, I promise!
Dredging chicken is super easy. Here’s how you do it:
Prepare your dry ingredients. If you make chicken breading often, you can even prepare a large batch of dry ingredients ahead of time. That way, you don’t have to go through your spice rack every time, and you only need to add the perishables, like parmesan.
If you’re on the first coat, pat the chicken dry with paper towels. That way, you get a nice, even coating on your chicken. You don’t want it to end up with big clumps of flour!
Dredge the chicken! Here are two good ways to do it:
Place the dry ingredients in a bowl. The bowl should be wide enough to fit your biggest piece of chicken. Drag the chicken through it, making sure to coat each side. If you use a deeper bowl, you can plunge the whole piece into your mixture, which tends to give a thicker coating.
Place the dry ingredients into a large resealable bag. Put your chicken pieces in one or two at a time (depending on the size), seal the bag, and shake to coat the chicken.
If you’re doing a base coat of flour, shake the chicken gently to removing excess flour. And you’re done!
This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You dunk your piece of chicken into a liquid and get it nice and coated.
The main reason for soaking chicken is to get a wet layer on the chicken. That way, when you dredge your chicken through some breadcrumbs or flour, you get a thicker chicken breading, which means more crunch!
But you can also soak your chicken for a longer time. Instead of just quickly dipping your chicken in the liquid, you can marinate it a few hours. 2-3 hours is fine if you’re short on time, but generally it’s best to marinate 8 hours or overnight.
One of the great things about marinating is that any seasoning you add to the liquid will have time to flavor your meat. And, unlike the breading, it’s a great time to use fresh herbs and spices: a fresh sprig of rosemary, crushed garlic, a bit of fresh parsley, or anything you like!
There are a few liquids to choose from when breading chicken:
The egg wash is a popular way to soak chicken. Mix 1 tablespoon of milk or water into 1 slightly beaten egg. This will coat about 2 chicken breasts.
As an alternative to the egg wash, you can use an egg white wash. Mix 1 tablespoon of milk or water with 2 slightly beaten egg whites.
The egg white wash is very similar to the egg wash, but you don’t get all the cholesterol. It’s not quite as easy to work with as the whole egg wash, but it is better for certain diets.
You can also use buttermilk to soak your chicken.
Buttermilk leaves a thick, viscous coating. It also gives a yummy, tangy flavor to the chicken.
Buttermilk is great if you want to soak your chicken for a longer time. You get more of that tangy flavor, and the acids in the buttermilk tenderize the chicken.
If you use buttermilk, be sure to let the excess buttermilk drip off the chicken after soaking it, but don’t shake the chicken. Just let gravity do its work!
Plain milk is another option.
Milk doesn’t stick to the chicken as much as the other liquids, so you end up with a thin coating. It also doesn’t alter the flavor too much.
For a long soak, milk will help tenderize the chicken without altering the flavor.
Sometimes I’ll use mayonnaise for this step, but usually cut it with milk or water. Mix thoroughly, and stop adding milk when the mixture drips out nicely from a spoon (it shouldn’t be clumped up). If it’s too thick, it won’t coat the chicken evenly.
If you like a thick chicken breading, mayonnaise is the way to go. It gives just about the thickest coating of all. You can cut it with more or less milk to get it just the way you want.
It also helps keep the chicken moist. But it’s greasy. I only use this with skinless chicken breasts, since they can handle the extra grease.
I’ve never actually used yogurt myself, but I know some people do. Use plain yogurt, and cut with a bit of milk if you feel it’s too thick.
Like mayonnaise, yogurt helps keep the moisture in, but without being quite as greasy. It also lets you get a pretty thick coating on. It’ll also give some flavor to the chicken, since it has a pretty strong flavor itself.
If you marinate the chicken for a longer time, the yogurt will tenderize it.
Some people will tell you that using buttermilk is the only way to make breaded chicken, others will say you absolutely have to use an egg wash.
But the truth is, the best way to make chicken breading is whichever way you prefer. So try different ways out until you find something that you love, and that you love to make!
Well that’s it! A bit wordy, but not so hard. The only tough part is deciding what to pick! But to know what you like, you have to try it out.
And now it’s time to put in all together in Part 2!