My grandmother’s recipe for Christmas cookies is a favorite in our family. The chocolate chips, candy cane, and nuts in the cookies make them tasty. They make fantastic holiday presents! Cleaning up is so much simpler when you bake them on parchment paper.
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 40 mins |
| Total Time: | 55 mins |
| Servings: | 60 |
| Yield: | 5 dozen |
Ingredients
- 2 egg whites, room temperature
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon cream of tartar
- ¾ cup white sugar
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 tablespoons crushed candy canes
- 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup chopped walnuts
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- Beat egg whites in a clean glass or metal bowl until foamy. Add salt and cream of tartar, and continue beating until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar while continuing to beat to stiff peaks. When the meringue is stiff remove from the mixer. Stir in vanilla and fold in candy canes, chocolate chips and walnuts. Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets. If you can’t bake all of the cookies at once, store the extra in the refrigerator until the other ones are done.
- Bake for 40 minutes in the preheated oven, or until dry enough to easily peel off of the cookie sheet. Cool cookies then store in an airtight tin.
Reviews
Made this at Christmas for my sister who’s gluten free. She loved it.
I had a lot of rave reviews for these cookies. I excluded the walnuts and did half vanilla extract half peppermint extract. I will definitely make them again!
Best cookie ever!!! I didn’t put the walnuts in though.
Super easy and delicious. However, I was unable to achieve stiff peaks. I think perhaps fresher eggs might have worked better. So when I spooned the batter onto parchment paper, they spread out like cookies. My kids love them and I’ll definitely make them again.
Wish I could have deducted half a star, only because there’s no way that “heaping tablespoons” turns out to be 60 servings, but I definitely had plenty for a cookie exchange. I also replaced the walnuts with mini holiday M&Ms; HUGE hit at the party. Definitely recommend. (And because they’re so sweet, I’d definitely err on the side of small cookies, versus “heaping.” You can always eat two!)
These are great! I made them as directed, but took another reviewer’s advice and put some crushed candy cane on top. Very cute, easy and delicious!! The reviewer who said it took 40 minutes to beat the eggs and only made 15 cookies clearly must have done something wrong. It took me about 10 minutes to get to stiff peaks, and I got plenty of cookies. Yum!
I made these addictive cookies for the 2nd time, and once again they were a huge hit! I love them because they merge all of the flavors of several traditional Christmas cookie flavors into one cookie. You have candy cane crumbles, chocolate, and crushed walnuts (I toast mine for a richer nut flavor) all held together by a light, yet pasty, sugary meringue binder. For an extra festive touch, once I mixed all of the ingredients, I evenly divide the unbaked mix into two bowls and added red food color to one, and green to the other. 3 drops is all that is needed to turn these white cookies into holly jolly shades of red and green. I make them a bit bigger because I find it virtually impossible to measure 1 tsp of the sticky, chunky batter. I used a 1/2 TBSP to scoop out the dough, which required extra baking time. In some cases it took an extra 12 min., but the “dough” is very forgiving. If they don’t release from the parchment cleanly and easily right out of the oven, that’s a big hint that they need more time in the oven. I used a kitchen timer set by 5 min. increments. It also helps to let them cool a few minutes on the cookie sheet before removing, lest they fall apart.
My daughters’ call these little pieces of heaven and they really are. I double the eggs (because 2 really are not enough – or they’re using EXTREMELY large eggs that are not available at our local grocer), cut out the walnuts, use 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips and sprinkle a little of the remaining candy cane on top for show. We get about 50 heaping tablespoon sized treats from this recipe.
An extremely good tasting cookie. A little more chewy then I would like. The chocolate and mint work well together and I liked how the candy cane melted into the cookie.
Made this today…very, very good and perfect for the holidays! Didn’t change a thing and had no problems.
I made changes OF COURSE. I used the basic meringue recipe but used lemon extract instead of vanilla and lemon zest instead of candycanes/ choco chips. I added a touch of yellow food coloring and they were PERFECT. Sunny yellow, lemony, light and crisp. I baked them for 40 minutes and then let them sit out over night. 1 hr out of the oven they were a bit wet in the center but by the next day PERFECT. They certainly didn’t make 60 cookies though. I got 1 cookie sheet of medium sized cookies, maybe 12-15. I will make these again for sure.
These are delish! Someone made these for a Christmas party I went to and were a huge hit! Such an interesting texture and very different. Egg whites being at room temp and making sure no yolk sneaks in is crucial to achieving peaks easily.
These are now my favorite holiday cookies. It took longer to bake as I wanted to make sure the meringue dried — baked about 50 minutes. The secret is room temp eggs!
These cookies were pretty good but kind of frustrating for me to make. I just couldnt get the batter to be as fluffy as I wanted and wasnt sure about the peaks. Wish there was more of an elaboration on that part of the recipe for those who arent use to dealing with meringue. I left out the walnuts cuz I didnt have em on hand. The cookies were good and I may make em again but nothing out of this world at all.
Everyone kind of picked other cookies instead of mine, but everyone who did try them loved them. 🙂
Although the finished product turned out to be tasty, there should have been more detailed instructions, especially in the area of creating “stiff peaks” for the merengue. My 12-year old daughter chose this as a recipe to make for her Dad as a Christmas surprise because it has everything that he liked. It took us over 40 minutes to get the “Stiff peaks” to form and we did add the sugar “gradually”. Plus, the recipes says it makes 60 cookies. We made 15. But, her Dad ate them with gusto and told her they were great, which is what really matters.
Very rich, but tasty. I like that they can be festive. I recommend making them small even though it says “heaping” spoonfuls.
Oh my goodness these are yummy! I followed the recipe to a “T” except for walnuts bc I didnt have any. I have only had meringue cookies once or twice growing up and I must say these are the best I have had. I made this today as a sort of preview for a recipe I had in mind for Christmas Eve to sort of just see how it came out and I will definately use it now. So simple.
Nummy! I’ve already been asked for the recipe by someone else. I skipped the walnuts. My cooking time was closer to 35 minutes rather than 40.
This was really good! I didn’t put the walnuts in because my husband hates walnuts and I also sprinkled candycane on top to decorate the cookies.