These cookies make for a great homemade gift and a festive addition to your holiday cookie box. Plus, they’re fun to bake, and even better to eat! It’s cookie season! I’ve been looking forward to sharing this recipe for a few weeks now. These are sugar cookies with flavor! Growing up, we didn’t bake sugar cookies much. It’s not that we didn’t enjoy them, we did. We just preferred my mom’s chocolate chip cookies or her peanut butter kisses that she’d make around the holidays. Plus, my mom didn’t love to mess around with cookies you needed to decorate, which I definitely understand. And we certainly never bought store-bought sugar cookies either. For whatever reason, I’ve never liked those, nor did my mom. I think they taste like straight sugar, so not really my thing. It wasn’t until I started baking my own cookies that I finally found recipes I really could enjoy, like these vanilla brown sugar eggnog cookies! When I bake a sugar cookie, I try to infuse it with flavor. A lot of times, that’s done by adding brown butter or chocolate. A few years ago, I shared an eggnog sugar cookie recipe that I loved, but it’s a little dated. This year, I wanted to share something with similar flavors, but I didn’t want to have to buy or make eggnog. Instead, I made these. A rich brown sugar cookie with lots of vanilla, then spiced rum (or use bourbon), cinnamon, and nutmeg. The very same flavors in most eggnog recipes!
Details
Step 1: Make the sugar cookie dough Start with softened, salted butter. Beat that together with brown sugar. I’ve been using organic, dark brown sugar recently. It has a coarse texture that melts really nicely into the cookies. Then, add an egg, the spiced rum, and the vanilla. Step 2: Dry ingredients For the dry mix: flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt. Mix this into the butter mixture. There’s absolutely nothing fancy here. Step 3: Roll the dough out Whenever I make any kind of cut-out cookie, I always like to roll out the dough, cut the cookies, and then freeze the cut cookies on a baking sheet for a few minutes. This ensures that the cookies hold their shape. I used a snowflake and a holiday tree to cut my cookies. If you want a few fancier cookies mixed into the bunch, this is The Grinch cookie cutter set I used. Oslo is obsessed with Mr. Grinch, so I had to attempt to make at least a few Grinch cookies. We think they turned out cute! Not perfect, but cute, and fun! Step 4: Freeze and bake Freeze the cookies in a single layer for 10 minutes, then bake for 8-10 minutes until the cookies turn light golden on the edges. Let the cookies cool before icing. Step 5: Ice + decorate I kept the icing simple (aside from The Grinch). I added a small amount of nutmeg and lots of vanilla. And for Mr. Grinch, I turned a portion of the icing green. It’s simple, but with a sprinkle of vanilla sugar on top, it’s perfect. I iced each cookie, then gave them a light sprinkling of vanilla sugar for some holiday sparkle. If you want to take it a step further, you can mix some edible gold dust into the vanilla sugar. But you just need a very tiny pinch. A little goes a long way! I was so excited to share these with Asher and Oslo. They both thought they were the cutest, and YUMMY too! A perfect Christmas sugar cookie with a whimsical feel and yummy flavors! Looking for other Christmas cookies? Here are my favorites: Chewy Christmas Snickerdoodles Vanilla Hot Chocolate Molten Cookies Holly Jolly Santa Cookies Vanilla Ginger Shortbread Wreaths The Santa Clause Cookies Easy Vanilla Bean Christmas Lights Cookies Lastly, if you make these Vanilla Brown Sugar Eggnog Cookies, be sure to leave a comment and/or give this recipe a rating! Above all, I love to hear from you guys and always do my best to respond to each and every comment. And of course, if you do make this recipe, please don’t forget to tag me on Instagram! Looking through the photos of recipes you all have made is my favorite!
