These chocolate snowflake cookies are buttery, melt in your mouth, cocoa shortbread cookies in the shape of snowflakes frosted with a layer of easy vanilla glaze. They will truly dazzle at your next holiday celebration! These cookies are delicate, buttery, crisp, and perfect for Christmas celebrations! They are fun to make and delicious to eat. They require only a few ingredients and will be ready in just 10 minutes. If you’re looking to bake something festive in a short span of time, this is the recipe you need. These Christmas cookies are perfect for almost any occasion to celebrate with friends, family and loved ones during the Holidays!
Ingredients you’ll need:
- Unsalted Butter: Since butter is a main flavor here, I would really recommend springing for a higher-quality brand. It is very important to have your butter at room temperature. You can ensure this by lightly pressing your finger on the block of butter. It should slightly leave an imprint. I also prefer to use unsalted butter because salted butters have varying amounts of salt content in them and it is always a good idea to add it on your own and avoid your bakes from being too salty.
- Granulated Sugar: Sugar acts as a binding agent to your muffins along with adding sweetness. You can use either granulated sugar, powdered sugar or caster sugar to make these cookies. Make sure you only use superfine sugar to get that melt in your mouth texture.
- Almond Extract: You must use a high quality pure almond extract in your recipes. This helps to add a rich flavor to your baked goods especially when they contain chocolate. This enhances the flavour of all ingredients (especially chocolate) and you should never leave it out. You can alternatively swap it with vanilla extract. Pure vanilla extracts are typically dark brown in color.
- All purpose flour: I highly recommend weighing all your ingredients using a kitchen scale for accurate recipe results. If you’re using cups, don’t scoop your cup into the flour. Spoon the flour into your cup and level it off with the back of a knife. You can also use a mix of all purpose and hazelnut flour alternatively.
- Kosher Salt: Adding a pinch of salt helps to balance out the flavours in the cookies. I have added sea salt for a little extra flavour however you can use normal iodised salt too.
- Cocoa Powder: A good quality natural and unsweetened dutch process cocoa powder is the best. This can make a huge difference in the taste of chocolate in your baked goods. I highly recommend you use a cocoa powder which is natural and unsweetened.
- Corn Syrup: Corn syrup gives the icing sticking power and creates a beautiful sheen on the dried icing. I don’t recommend skipping it, but you can if absolutely needed.
- Powdered Sugar: You will need powdered of confectioners’ sugar to add to your icing. It mixes in like a breeze and leaves no grainy lumps at all!
FAQ
1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder and salt. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and granulated sugar until the mixture is fluffy and pale yellow. Add the almond extract. Then, add the flour a cup at a time, until you have a crumbly dough that’s starting to come together.
3. Turn the dough onto a pastry or cutting board. Press the dough together with clean hands until you have a smooth ball of dough. Flatten the dough into a 1/2” disc. Wrap with plastic wrap, and freeze for about 15 minutes or refrigerate for 30 minutes.
4. On a lightly floured surface, roll each disc of dough until it’s 1/4” thick. Cut out 3” snowflake cookies with a cookie cutter.
5. Place the cookies 2 inchess apart on the prepared sheets, and bake for 8-10 minutes, until the bottoms and edges are lightly browned. Let cool for about 5 minutes on the pan, and then move the cookies to a wire rack to completely cool.
6. Pipe with vanilla royal icing and allow to set. Enjoy!
Store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator for upto a week or at room temperature for upto 3 days.
You can double or half this recipe as per your needs. However I have to warn you, these cookies are really so addictive that you’ll finish a batch in no time.
To ensure that the snowflake cookies maintain their shape in the oven, chill the cookie dough for at least one hour, then freeze the cutout dough for 15 minutes.
Tips for making the best chocolate snowflake cookies:
- Measure the flour carefully. Too much flour in the mix is the number one reason why cookie recipes fail. Excess flour makes cookies {and most other baked goods} dry and prevents them from spreading in the oven. Carefully spoon your flour into the measuring cup and then level it off with the flat edge of a knife. Whatever you do, don’t scoop the flour directly from the bag or container with the measuring cup as it causes the flour to be packed in too tightly.
- Use the very best quality ingredients. This dark chocolate almond tart requires so few ingredients so be sure to splurge on the good stuff. I use high quality dutch process cocoa powder, real almond extract and my pure heavy cream or heavy whipping cream.
- Do not over mix the dough. Because we do not want to incorporate much air into the dough, be sure to mix the butter and sugars together on low speed. Mixing at a higher speed for too long will aerate the dough and leave you with cookies that spread too much in the oven.
- Roll the dough before chilling. For best results I like to roll the dough as soon as it’s ready. Roll the dough to 3/8 inch thick between two pieces of parchment paper and then pop it in the freezer for at least 15 minutes before cutting the shapes. Once the shapes are cut, place the cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet and return them to the freezer for 10 minutes before baking them in a preheated oven. The extra chill time will help to prevent any spreading in the oven.
- Do not over bake. For those soft, buttery, melt in your mouth cookies be sure to pull them from the oven when the edges are set and lightly golden brown and the center of the cookie is puffed and pale. The middle of the cookies might seem slightly under baked but the residual heat from the pan will continue to bake the cookies once they are removed from the oven.
- Cool the cookies completely. Be sure to let the cookies cool for 10 minutes on the cookie sheets once removed from the oven. Then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
Enjoy a little virtual snowfall!
HOW TO GET THE BEST RESULTS FROM THIS RECIPE?
All of the recipes on the blog are thoroughly tested multiple times and carefully designed so that anyone can reproduce these delicious baked good in their own kitchen and enjoy them to the fullest. The only way to make this possible is when anyone can exactly replicate the measurements and temperatures.
- In order to standardise the way ingredients are measured, I highly recommend that you weigh them in grams. Volume measurements are nearly not as accurate and have a lot of scope for errors. To precisely be able to replicate the recipes, all you will need is a kitchen scale!
- Every oven heats up differently. Your oven might be over heating or under heating by around 50 degrees or more and you might not even know. In order to ensure that you are baking at the right temperatures, I highly recommend investing in an oven thermometer!
If you would still like to bake using volume measurements, I mentioned those below. However, I primarily test my recipes in grams and cannot promise the best results if you do so. Trust me, once you’ll start using these tools you’d never want to go back!
I hope you’ll enjoy these easy and pretty Chocolate Snowflake Cookies this Christmas and don’t forget to bookmark this sugar cookies recipe for the holidays. These cute cookies are my favorite and perfect to celebrate any occasion with friends and family!
Happy Christmas baking! x
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Chocolate Snowflake Cookies
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 16 snowflakes 1x
Description
These chocolate snowflake cookies are buttery, melt in your mouth, cocoa shortbread cookies in the shape of snowflakes frosted with a layer of easy vanilla glaze. They will truly dazzle at your next holiday celebration!
Ingredients
CHOCOLATE SHORTBREAD COOKIES
- 250g (2 cups) all purpose flour, spooned and levelled
- 50g (½ cup) dutch process unsweetened natural cocoa powder
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 227g (1 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 150g (¾ cup) granulated or caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon pure almond or vanilla extract
VANILLA ICING
- 180g (1½ cups) powdered or confectioners’ sugar
- ¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoons light corn syrup
- 2 Tablespoons room temperature milk
- pinch salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350° F and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder and salt. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, cream the butter and granulated sugar until the mixture is fluffy and pale yellow. Add the almond extract. Then, add the flour a cup at a time, until you have a crumbly dough that’s starting to come together.
- Turn the dough onto a pastry or cutting board. Press the dough together with clean hands until you have a smooth ball of dough. Flatten the dough into a 1/2” disc. Wrap with plastic wrap, and freeze for about 15 minutes or refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll each disc of dough until it’s 1/4” thick. Cut out 3” snowflake cookies with a cookie cutter.
- Place the cookies 1” apart on the prepared sheets, and bake for 8-10 minutes, until the bottoms and edges are lightly browned. Let cool for about 5 minutes on the pan, and then move the cookies to a wire rack to completely cool.
- Using a fork, stir the confectioners’ sugar, vanilla, corn syrup, and milk together in a medium bowl. It will be very thick and almost impossible to stir.
- Switch to a whisk and whisk in 1/2 Tablespoon of milk. If you lift the whisk and let the icing drizzle back into the bowl, the ribbon of icing will hold shape for a few seconds before melting back into the icing. That is when you know it’s the right consistency and is ready to use.
- If it’s too thick (sometimes it is), whisk in another 1/2 Tablespoon of milk or a little more until you reach the consistency.
- Transfer to a piping bag and pipe onto cooled and baked cookies. Allow to set. Enjoy!
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Category: Christmas cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: chocolate snowflake cookies, chocolate shortbread cookies, Christmas snowflake cookies, Cocoa Snowflake cookies
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