Opinion

Christmas cookie magic

By Jaci Hicken

Dec 16, 2025

Jaci Hicken, our seasoned journalist and trained chef, has been busy in the kitchen preparing easy, low-cost Christmas recipes that you can cook and share as personalised Christmas baked-goods gifts.

Are you looking for a simple recipe that the kids can bake and gift this holiday season?

Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content

Here is a simple cookie recipe, with a bit of (my non) artistic flair, that can become Christmas cookies.

Ingredients

150 grams of plain flour
150 grams of self-raising flour
125 grams of butter
125 grams of sugar
Zest of one lemon
1 egg

Method

Preheat your oven to 160°C or 150°C (fan forced).
Sift the flours together.
Cream together butter, sugar and lemon zest. Add egg and mix well.
Add flours and mix to form a firm dough. Add the juice of the lemon if you need a little moisture.
Roll out to a thickness of 5mm and cut out your Christmas shapes.
You will have leftover dough that can be kneaded back together, re-rolled and cut into more shapes. You can re-roll and shape until you have no dough left.
Bake at 160°C for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.
Once cooled, icing with Christmas icing.

Christmas icing recipe

This is a general cookie icing recipe and as you can see from the photos, icing is not my strong point.

You can simply decorate your cookies, which may impress everyone.

Ingredients

150 grams of sifted icing sugar * 3
A capful of vanilla, strawberry flavouring and peppermint flavouring
A squirt of red and green food colour
Added water.

Method

Place each measure of icing sugar in a bowl
Add the flavouring
To the strawberry, add the red food colouring, to the peppermint, the green
To each bowl of icing sugar, add a little water and mix to form a runny paste.
Place each different colour of icing in an individual piping bag.
Pipe over the cooled cookies.
Allow the icing to set, before plating up and serving to guests

Once the icing on the cookies is set, you could bag them up, with a bit of Christmas ribbon and give them to that expecting friend (the kids' teacher might be ideal) as a homemade Christmas gift.

I’m handing them out to everyone in the newsroom.

Now, I did go a bit overboard with the food colouring and icing, but there was no turning back once the colouring was in the bowl!

Merry Christmas,

– Jaci

Do you have a favourite family Christmas recipe? Share your favourite Christmas recipes with Jaci at jaci.hicken@mmg.com.au