Festive and delicious, our iced Chanukah cookies are delicate, delicious, and topped with easy-to-make, Royal Icing. Perfect for dessert or holiday gifts!

The Backstory: One of my favorite things to do every year is to bake holiday cookies with my children. I love watching them cut out little menorahs, dreidels, Stars of David, and seeing their faces when their cookies come out of the oven, ready to be decorated (and eaten). More of the Backstory after the recipe…

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Iced Chanukah Cookies

Delicious butter cookies are the perfect base for decorating for Chanukah. The cookies are crisp and thin and you and your family will love making them together for the holidays!

Course Desserts

Cuisine Jewish

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 8 minutes

Total Time 28 minutes

Servings 24 cookies

Ingredients

For the Cookies

• 1 cup butter or vegetable shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups all purpose flour sifted
• 1/2 tsp. Salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. pure vanilla or almond extract

Royal Icing (Optional)

• 1 lb. confectioner's sugar
• 3 large egg whites
• 1/2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
• food coloring, sprinkles, candies, if desired

Instructions

1. Using an electric mixer, cream butter well, beating in sugar gradually. Add eggs and beat until fluffy. Add dry ingredients, sifted together, a little at a time. Add vanilla or almond extract.
2. Chill dough to make rolling easier. Roll very thin on lightly floured board. Cut out symbol shaped with Chanukah cookie cutters.
3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake on ungreased cookie sheets for 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool on wire racks.
4. When cool, decorate with Royal Icing (Optional) Place the confectioners' sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add the egg whites and lemon juice. Beat at medium speed until the sugar and eggs are thoroughly combined and the icing is thick and white. Place small amounts of icing in separate bowls and add a few drops of food coloring to each to create different colors.
5. Brush or pipe on icing. Add decorative sugars, candies, or sprinkles and let dry.

…The Backstory continues: These iced Chanukah cookies roll out perfectly and are light and delicious. Although Shirlee’s recipe doesn’t state it, you can add colored sugar to the tops of the cookies before baking, or keep them plain and bake as is, and decorate after they cool with Royal Icing or any kind of icing or decorations you choose. They bake up think, crisp, and absolutely scrumptious.

Another thing I love doing at the holidays is baking up batches of my favorite cookies and bars and packaging them for holiday gifts. Just stack the cooled cookies on top of the other in a clear treat bag or pack in short stacks in a festive gift box (I love the boxes you can get at MIchael’s that look like old-fashioned bakery boxes but have see-through windows on top so you can see the treats), and with with festive ribbon. Delish.

Thank you (again), cousin Lennie, for permission to re-publish this recipe.

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Jodi Luber

Here goes: Born in Brooklyn. Daughter of a bagel baker with a Henny Youngman soul and a mom who makes Joan Rivers seem tame. Late bloomer. Married the love of my life at 45 and love being a mom to our three kids. I'm a professor at Boston U. Happiest in the kitchen baking and remembering how my dad would melt from a single bite of my cheesecake.

Jodi Luber

Jodi Luber

Jodi Luber

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