This Christmas sprinkle cookies recipe makes delightfully light and crumbly cookies with cornflakes.
Topped with red, green, and gold festive holiday sprinkles, the cookies are easy to bake, and make absolutely gorgeous treats for Christmas. Pack them in clear cookie containers or bags, and they make great gifts too!
Adapted from my easy cornflakes cookies recipe, the cookies are crunchy both on the inside and outside, thanks to the cornflakes. The cookie dough itself is light and crumbly, and when paired with the light and crunchy cornflakes, brings the best of both into one lovely treat.
If you like these festive cookies, you might also want to try my other equally bright and cheerful treats like these easy Christmas cupcakes, Christmas wreath cookies, mini Christmas cheesecake, snowflakes cookies and easy Christmas cake.
And if you like light and crisp cookies, you should also check out my mini chocolate chip cookies that come in delicious bite-sizes, butterscotch pecan cookies, all butter shortbread bars and Biscoff butter cookies. And if you want to make custom colored sprinkles, check out my tutorial on how to color sprinkles the easy way.
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❤️Why you will love this recipe
- The cookies have a perfectly light and crumbly texture. Each bite gives you a lovely crunch.
- The recipe uses simple and basic ingredients and is fairly quick to make.
- These are the easy Christmas cookies you can make. Unlike rolled sugar cookies, you don't need any rolling pin or special cookie cutters.
- The bright and festive colors of the sprinkles are perfect for the holiday season.
- The cookies are great for your Christmas party, Santa's cookie plate and even as gifts.
📋Ingredients
- Cornstarch (corn flour) + all purpose flour + baking powder + salt - mix these together and sift them to break any lumps especially in the cornstarch and baking powder. Use fine salt.
- Cornflakes - use plain and unsweetened, fresh and crunchy cornflakes for best results.
- Butter - I use salted butter. If using unsalted butter, add an extra tiny pinch of salt to the recipe.
- Granulated sugar (caster sugar) - fine sugar works best for this recipe. Avoid coarse sugar as it will leave specks of sugar on your cookies after baking. If you do not have granulated sugar, process the coarse sugar in a food processor to make it fine.
- Egg Yolk - Egg white is not required for this recipe. The egg yolk helps to bring the dough together without adding too much liquid into the dough.
- Vanilla extract - adds a lovely flavor and aroma to these delicious cookies.
- Christmas sprinkles (or your favorite holiday sprinkles)
*Refer to the recipe card below for full list of ingredients and exact quantities. For best results, use a digital kitchen scale where applicable*
🧾Substitution and variations
- Vanilla extract can be replaced with almond extract if you like.
- The color of sprinkles used to make these cookies can be customized. You can dip these cookies in any colored or shaped sprinkles you like. Since I made these for Christmas, I choose red, gold and green sprinkles for my cookies.
- If you do not fancy sprinkles, you can also use crushed candy canes or sanding sugar (you can make your own sanding sugar like in this butterfly shortbread cookies recipe).
- You can also make these cookies for Valentine’s day and use red and pink sprinkles.
- Alternatively, you can use rainbow sprinkles to make colorful funfetti cookies.
- You can also add chocolate chips into the cookies before baking them. Use 50g of chocolate chips and add after the cornflakes into the dough. Shape and bake as usual.
This recipe has not been tested with other substitutions or variations. If you do try, please let me know in the comments section below!
👩🏻🍳How to make
Mixing the cookie dough
Step 1: Cream butter and sugar. Use a large mixing bowl. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until creamy (image 1).
Step 2: Add the egg yolk, followed by vanilla (image 2). Continue beating until the traces of the egg are no longer visible and the vanilla is well combined. Scrape the sides of the bowl.
Step 3: Add the all purpose flour, cornstarch, baking powder and salt. Combine these dry ingredients in a bowl with a hand whisk (image 3) before sifting them into the creamed wet ingredients (image 4).
Mix until well combined.
Step 4: Add the cornflakes. If using cake mixer, you can add the cornflakes whole without crushing them. Use low speed to avoid the flakes from flying all over (image 5).
If mixing by hand, crush them lightly with your hands or by placing them in a zip lock bag and pressing with a rolling pin.
The dough will appear crumbly and that is fine. Use a spatula to bring the dough together loosely (image 6).
Shaping, decorating and baking the cookies
Step 5: Shape the cookies. Portion the dough to 1 tablespoon size. It will be hard to scoop the dough with a measuring spoon or cookie scoop because of the cornflakes. An easier way would be to pinch the dough and press it into a measuring spoon (image 7).
Scoop the pressed dough out of the spoon with your fingers, form into a round ball and flatten it lightly (image 8).
Step 6: Top with sprinkles. Dip the top of each flattened cookie into a small separate bowl filled with sprinkles. Press them lightly so that the sprinkles stick to the dough (image 9).
Place the sprinkle-dipped cookies onto a baking sheet or parchment paper lined cookie tray (image 10).
Step 7: Bake the cookies. Bake in a preheated oven at 175 degrees Celsius for 12 minutes. Remove the baked cookies from the oven. Transfer them onto a cooling rack (wire rack) to cool completely to room temperature. Keep cookies in an airtight container to retain their crunch.
💡Expert tips
- Use fresh and crunchy cornflakes - If they are no longer as crunchy as they should be, do not use them to make these cookies. They will remain as such and your cookies will not be as crunchy as they should be.
- Avoid sweetened or glazed cornflakes - Frosted or glazed ones will tend to make the cookies too sweet.
💭FAQs
Yes, it is perfectly ok. In fact, that is how you need to add them to the cookie dough - uncrushed.
If you are using a cake mixer to mix the dough, that in itself will help to crush the cornflakes lightly. If you are mixing by hand, crush them lightly with your spatula as you mix them into the batter.
Yes, you certainly can. Add the sprinkles after adding the cornflakes. Shape and bake the cookies as usual.
These Christmas sprinkle cookies have baking powder in them. This helps the cookies rise in size during baking.
Hence, the cookies do rise in size. However, it is a very slight increase. Also, the cookies do not spread when baking.
For this reason, the cookies need not be placed too far apart on the baking trays. Suffice if you place them just slightly apart to avoid them from sticking to one another during baking as well as for easy handling.
These are crunchy cookies. They are crispy on the edges and crumbly on the inside with a lovely crunch from the cornflakes.
Reducing the cookie sizes is fine. You will still get cookies of the same texture. Just remember to reduce the baking time accordingly.
Increasing the size of the cookie, however, might alter the texture of these cookies. Too large a cookie might leave you with cookies that are crunchy on the outside but soft on the inside.
Depending on how large you make the cookies, you can try to increase the baking time and reduce the baking temperature. That way, you don’t risk your cookies from burning on the sides while waiting for the insides to cook.
Technically you can. Reducing them will give you cookies that are less crunchy.
You can also increase the amount but I do not quite recommend this as that would mean that there is probably not enough cookie dough to hold all the cornflakes together to form cookies.
Since these Christmas sprinkle cookies are meant to be crunchy, it is important that they are stored in an airtight container. This will help the cookies (including the cornflakes in the cookies) retain their crispness and crunch.
These cookies last for a good 2 weeks when stored well.
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📖Recipe
Christmas Sprinkle Cookies (Easy Holiday Cookies)
For best results, use the metrics measurements. US customary measurements have not been tested and are only meant for guide.
Ingredients
- 150 g all purpose flour
- 25 g cornstarch (about 4 tablespoons)
- 125 g butter
- 100 g granulated sugar
- 100 g cornflakes
- 1 egg yolk
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon baking powder
- Sprinkles
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 175°Celsius.
- Line baking trays with parchment paper. Set aside.
- In a medium-sized bowl, cream butter and sugar until creamy. Scrape the sides of the bowl.
- Add the egg yolk, followed by vanilla extract. Beat until the traces of the egg yolk are no longer visible and the vanilla is well combined. Scrape the sides of the bowl.
- Combine cornstarch, all purpose flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and sift these dry ingredients into the creamed mixture.
- Mix until well incorporated. Scrape the sides of the bowl.
- Add the cornflakes and mix into the dough on low speed. This will help to crush the cornflakes into the cookie dough (see Note 1 for mixing by hand).
- Shape the cookies by pressing the dough into a '1 tablespoon' measuring spoon. Scoop the pressed dough out and form into ball and flatten it lightly with your fingers.
- Pour sprinkles into a small bowl. Dip the top of the flattened cookies into the sprinkles. Press slightly to attach the sprinkles to the cookies.
- Turn the cookies over and place them on the baking tray.
- Bake for 12 minutes until the sides turn light brown. Remove cookies from the oven and cool them over a wire rack.
- Store cookies in an airtight container to retain their crispiness.
Notes
- Crush the cornflakes lightly with hands or with a rolling pin (by placing them in a zip lock bag) if you wish to mix them into the dough by hand (with a spatula).
- For best results, use fresh and crunchy cornflakes.
- Use unsweetened cornflakes. Frosted or glazed ones will not be suitable for this recipe.
Mary
Love the cornflakes and corn flour in this cookie recipe. Totally unexpected. Delicious.
Giangi
So festive! I never worked with cornflakes in a cookie recipe, but yours are super delicious. Thank you for sharing a great fun and delicious recipe.
Nancy
These Christmas sprinkle cookies looks amazing. I would to add these to my holiday baking.