Peppermint Christmas Cookies
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You’ll love these festive peppermint Christmas cookies, with their fun shapes and delicious, buttery frosting!
Buttercream frosting is used, rather than royal icing, for a soft bite. The buttercream will harden just on the outside shell to protect your cookie designs.
I will share the no-chill sugar cookie recipe, vanilla buttercream recipe, and the full tutorial (photo series and video!) for how to decorate these peppermint Christmas sugar cookies!
Included in the tutorial is the wrapped peppermint candy cookie, candy cane cookie, and Christmas tree cookie.
Let’s get started!
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Skip to
- Part 1: Gathering the Supplies for the Peppermint Christmas Cookies
- Part 2: Baking the Cookies and Setting up the Icing Bags
- Decorated Christmas Peppermint Cookies with Buttercream Frosting
- Part 3: Decorating the Peppermint Christmas Cookies with Buttercream Frosting
- Save the Tutorial for These Christmas Peppermint Decorated Cookies
Part 1: Gathering the Supplies for the Peppermint Christmas Cookies
To decorate these Christmas peppermint cookies, you will want to gather:
- 4 Icing bags
- One Wilton #4 tip, one #12 tip, one #21 tip, one #104 tip, and a #150 tip
- 2 Couplers
- Christmas wrapped candy cookie cutter, Christmas candy cane with bow cookie cutter, and Christmas tree cookie cutter
- Pink, red, and green gel food dye
- Palette knife (I use this one for these cookies!)
- Cute Christmas sprinkles
- Ingredients for a crusting buttercream & sugar cookie dough – found below in recipe card
- Spoon for adding the sprinkles, optional
Part 2: Baking the Cookies and Setting up the Icing Bags
Use the recipe card below for the sugar cookie and buttercream frosting recipes.
Decorated Christmas Peppermint Cookies with Buttercream Frosting
Equipment
- Stand Mixer with Paddle Attachment
- Rubber Spatula
- Measuring cups and spoons
- Medium Sized Mixing Bowl
- Lined aluminum cookie sheet parchment paper or silicone lined baking sheet
- Rolling Pin
- Cookie cutters and tools see part 1 on this post for the specific tools needed
- Gel food dye
Ingredients
Buttercream Frosting
- ½ cup room temperature unsalted butter 4 ounces
- ½ cup room temperature salted butter 4 ounces
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
- 1-3 tbsp. whole milk
Sugar Cookies
- 1 cup cold salted butter cubed
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 3 cups all purpose flour measured with the scoop & level method
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 1 egg
- 1.5 tsp. vanilla extract
Instructions
- Remove all of the butter from the refrigerator. You will make the sugar cookies first but the butter for the frosting needs to come to room temperature before mixing.
Sugar Cookies
- Preheat the oven to 350℉ and prepare an aluminum cookie sheet by placing either parchment paper or a silicone baking mat on it.
- In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the flour and baking powder and mix together. Set this aside.
- Cube a cup of salted butter and then, in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, combine the cubed butter with the granulated sugar. Mix until creamed together well.
- To the stand mixer, add in the egg and vanilla extract and mix until combined.
- Slowly add in the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl to the stand mixer.
- Roll the dough out to 3/8" thick and use the cookie cutters to cut out the cookies. Place the cookies onto the prepared baking sheet and bake for 9-11 minutes or until the tops of the cookies no longer look wet. When baking the cookies, only bake 6-8 cookies at a time to leave proper space between each cookie to cook without spreading. Overcrowding the cookie sheet will cause spread.
Buttercream Frosting
- In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, add the room temperature salted and unsalted butter and mix on high until light and fluffy.
- Mix in the powdered sugar little by little. Add in the vanilla extract and milk about halfway through adding the sugar to help the frosting come together. Start with one tablespoon of milk and work up to three if needed, depending on the consistency you want. I like to aim for a peanut butter consistency or thinner.
- Follow the directions in Part 2 for the specific way you will divide the buttercream and set up the icing bags.
How to Decorate the Christmas Cookies
- Please refer to Part 3 of this blog post for all of the cookie decorating tutorials.
Notes
Make your buttercream icing according to the recipe and separate it into four bowls:
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-
- add about 1/6 of the frosting to one bowl and dye it pink
- add another 1/6 of the frosting to another bowl and dye it red
- dye half of the remaining frosting green
- keep the rest of the frosting white
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To set up the piping bags:
- place the tip #150 into an icing bag and put the pink buttercream in it
- place the tip #4 into an icing bag and put the red buttercream in it
- place couplers into two icing bags – put the white in one bag and the green in the other
Part 3: Decorating the Peppermint Christmas Cookies with Buttercream Frosting
Check out the video tutorial showing the overall process for decorating the buttercream peppermint Christmas cookies then follow the step-by-step photo series tutorial below.
How to Decorate the Candy Cane Ribbon Cookies with Buttercream
- Attach the Wilton tip #12 to the white buttercream and draw the candy cane shape.
- Use the red buttercream (that has the tip #4 in it) to draw the candy cane stripes.
- Use the pink buttercream (that has the tip #150 in it) to draw the bow. Here are the steps broken down:
Start in the middle of the candy cane and draw a squiggle line down Repeat on the other side Place the piping tip just inside the lower part of the bow, then pipe out toward the edge and back over toward the middle of the candy cane. You can see in the next photo where I started the tip Repeat on the other side Start in the middle, draw a line up toward the right top of the bow, then bring it back to the middle. See the next photo for the shape this will look like Repeat on the other side Draw a horizontal line across the center of the bow for the “tie”
How to Decorate the Peppermint Candy Cookies with Buttercream
- Attach the Wilton tip #12 to the white buttercream and pipe a circle of buttercream.
- Use the palette knife to smooth the frosting and clean up the edges.
- Use the red icing bag to draw peppermint candy details. You can draw a swirl or lines around the circumference. I went with the “starlight” candy look. Then, use the palette knife to clean up the edges if needed again.
- Remove the tip #12 from the white buttercream and attach the tip #104. Create the plastic wrapping by keeping the wide side of the tip close to the circle and the narrow side on the edges of the cookie.
The wide side of the tip should be toward the candy Hold the tip at a slight angle to pipe up and then back down to create the ruffle Repeat for each ruffle on the wrapped candy cookie
How to Decorate the Christmas Tree Cookies with Buttercream
- Use the green buttercream (with tip #21) to pipe the branches of the Christmas tree. Rotate the cookie 180 degrees and work one layer at a time.
- Spoon on some pretty Christmas sprinkles.
How cute are these? This set is so fun and great for beginner cookie decorators.
Don’t forget to check out my online Christmas sugar cookie class where you can learn all these techniques plus WAY more, just in time for Christmas!
Save the Tutorial for These Christmas Peppermint Decorated Cookies
Use the image below to pin this tutorial for buttercream peppermint cookies to your holiday party board on Pinterest. Alternatively, use any of the social share icons on the top of the page to share it to your favorite social media site.
