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Candy Cane Cookies
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If you’re planning your Christmas baking lineup or juggling a couple of cookie exchanges, these Candy Cane Cookies belong at the top of your list. They bake up soft, minty, and downright adorable, and people go wild for that powdered sugar sparkle. Plus, the dough is easy, the peppermint flavor hits just right, and they stand out on any cookie tray. They are one of our favorites!
Ingredient Notes + Variations
A handful of pantry staples come together to make a soft cookie base with a festive peppermint twist. The dough stays light and tender, thanks to a simple mix of butter, sugar, and just enough crushed candy canes for crunch and color. Here are a couple things to note:
- Powdered sugar coats the dough and creates a soft, crackly exterior.
- Crushed candy canes add color, texture, and that classic holiday flavor. Crush them yourself using a rolling pin or mallet or buy a bag of pre-crushed candy canes.
How to Make Candy Cane Cookies
These cookies come together easily. You mix the dough, roll it in powdered sugar, bake until set, and let them cool. For full recipe details, including ingredients and measurements needed, see the printable recipe card down below.
Step 1: Preheat Oven + Prep Pan
Get your oven to 350° F and line baking sheets with parchment or a silicone mat.
Step 2: Crush the Candy Canes
Place them in a bag and give them a few good taps with a rolling pin.
Step 3: Make the Dough
Cream the butter and sugar, add the vanilla extract and egg, then blend in the dry ingredients until just combined. Stir in the crushed candy canes.
Step 4: Roll in Powdered Sugar
Shape the dough into balls, coat in powdered sugar and place on prepared baking sheet.
Step 5: Bake
Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begins to BARELY golden brown. This is the key to their chewiness. For best results, you want the outside of the cookie to look matte (not shiny) when you pull them out. Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.
Pro Tip: I use lighter colored baking sheets, so the bake time is based on that. If using a nonstick darker baking sheet, reduce baking time by about 2 minutes.
Tips for Success
- Don’t overbake, the tops should look matte and set.
- Use light colored baking sheets to keep the bottoms pale.
- Keep dough balls uniform in size for even baking.
- Let cookies rest a few minutes before moving them.
I LOVED how these Christmas Candy Cane Cookies turned out and hope they make it to your mouth soon. These are great to add to Christmas cookie platters, cookie exchanges or to leave out on Christmas Eve for Santa! Whatever your holiday tradition is, I hope you make these this holiday season! The printable recipe card is below! Have a great day, friends!
Candy Cane Cookies
This sweet and chewy Christmas Candy Cane Cookie recipe is adapted from my award winning Lemon Crinkle Cookies recipe and are absolutely divine and so festive!
Ingredients
- 3 candy canes crushed (1/4 cup)
- 1/2 cup butter softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/8 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease light colored baking sheets with nonstick cooking spray, line with parchment paper or use silicone baking mat and set aside.
- Place candy canes into a plastic food storage bag and crush using a rolling pin. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whip in vanilla and egg. Scrape sides and mix again. Stir all dry ingredients together in a small bowl and then in pour into the mixer and slowly mix until just combined, excluding the powdered sugar. Scrape sides of the bowl and mix again briefly. Stir in crushed candy canes.
- Pour powdered sugar onto a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on the baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.
- Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begins to barely brown and cookies look matte (not melty or shiny). Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
Video
Notes
If using a nonstick darker baking tray, reduce baking time by about 2 minutes
Storage + Make Ahead
- Room temperature: Store airtight up to 4 days.
- Make ahead: Chill dough up to 48 hours, then let soften for 10 minutes before rolling.
- Freezer: Freeze baked cookies up to 2 months.
- Freeze the dough: Scoop into balls, freeze, then store up to 2 months. Roll in powdered sugar just before baking.
Nutrition
Calories: 113kcalCarbohydrates: 18gProtein: 1gFat: 4gSaturated Fat: 2gCholesterol: 16mgSodium: 66mgPotassium: 15mgSugar: 12gVitamin A: 130IUCalcium: 5mgIron: 0.4mg
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Variations
- Swap peppermint candy for chocolate mints.
- Add a bit of peppermint extract for stronger mint flavor.
- Tint half the dough red and swirl them for a marbled look.
FAQ About Candy Cane Cookies
Why aren’t my cookies spreading?
A lot of you have mentioned to me that these cookies don’t spread. This problem happens because there is too much flour in your cookie dough!
Fluff up your flour, spoon it into your measuring cup and then level the top. That is the correct way to measure flour and how I measured it for this recipe. So be careful when measuring and you’ll have perfect Candy Cane Cookies.
Why did my cookies spread so much?
A common problem when making these cookies is that they flatten out way too much! Why?
Butter.
This recipe calls for softened butter, not melted butter. The best way to get softened butter is to plan ahead. A couple of hours before you make these cookies set 1/2 cup of butter on the counter. As it sits there is will soften.
But if you are in a pinch you can microwave butter to soften it instead. Microwave in 5-second intervals rotating your cube of butter each time. Please please please use caution when softening this way. It can easily go from solid to melted in seconds! And in turn, your cookies will spread way too much.
Why is my dough so sticky?
If you already used melted butter instead of softened butter, and your candy cane cookie dough is sticky don’t worry! You have two options to fix this.
Pop your dough in the fridge for 30 minutes to solidify the dough a bit.
OR
Add in small amounts of flour until your cookie dough comes together better. Definitely use my photo of the cookie dough above to base your cookie dough off of.
More of the Best Christmas Cookies to Bake!
- Triple Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies
- Chocolate Mint Cookies
- Perfect Shortbread Cookies
- Christmas Shortbread Jam Cookies
- Gingerbread Man Cookies with Royal Icing
If you make this recipe, I would really appreciate it if you would give it a star rating and leave your review in the comments! If you have a picture of your finished dish, post it on Instagram using the hashtag #laurenslatest and tagging me @laurens_latest.
Easy and really good! I followed the recipe exactly and they turned out great. It took 12 minutes in my oven but I didn’t adjust for my high elevation.
“Why aren’t my cookies spreading?
A lot of you have mentioned to me that these cookies don’t spread. This problem happens because there is too much flour in your cookie dough! “
It would probably help if the conversion to metric was correct-currently it is doubled.
IMO, I think the dough should be chilled first. I followed the directions to a T and my cookies spread too much. They also require much more candy cane than a 1/4 cup again IMO.
I weighed my flour for 180 grams to be 1 1/2 cups but I think another 1/8 to a 1/4 cup more would have helped. My husband liked it but thought it was a simple cracked sugar cookie that his grandma used to make. Oh well, good not great for a first try.
The metric amount for flour for 24 cookies is doubled. 1.5 cups of flour is only about 180-200 grams of flour.
Sadly I realized this too late but I had enough ingredients to double the batch.
I wish I saw this comment- I made the same mistake. Bummed that the author hasn’t corrected this since you posted last year.
I put a bag of toffee bits into my shortbread dough.
It’s FANTASTIC!!! People are crazy for these cookies.
I tripled this recipe because they’re going to be part of some Christmas cookie packages for my husband’s coworkers. Because of the larger quantity and the high cost of butter right now, I did use Blue Bonnet sticks (not usually part of my baking process—butter is better), and the cookies required extra baking time as a result. I added peppermint extract and white chocolate chips, and these cookies are chewy, minty perfection! Thanks so much for a simply sweet recipe!
It is a great way to use up all the extra candy canes I have each year from my classroom gingerbread house making. The tips at the top were great. I always wondered why my cookies spread out too much. Never thought I would like a peppermint tasting cookie but these are awesome.
Trying to post a picture but can’t see where to do that.
[…] Candy Cane Cookies […]
The cookies were really fun to make, plus crushing the peppermints is kinda theatric, this recipe was very fun, plus my family said it taxed amazing, but question it. I didn’t excitedly have baking powder. So I decided to use a mix of cream of tartar, baking soda, and cornstarch, but their cookies ended up flat.
Not sure if it was something I did or what! Cooked for 9 minutes, really raw. At 11 minutes still uncooked. Baked for 13 barely cooked, 14 cooked but once cooled they were really really hard!!
Most easy but very yummy Christmas cookie recipe! A great new Christmas treat to add to our lead up to Christmas ?
I absolutely loved the Candy Cane cookies!!! They are delicious!!!!
They are going to be one of my Christmas baking all the time!!!
The only change I did was omitted the baking soda – don’t like the taste instead I did 1 tsp baking powder
SOOOO good! Just the right amount of candy cane. Delicious!