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Candy Cane Cookies
December 4, 2023
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This sweet and chewy Christmas Candy Cane Cookie recipe is adapted from my award winning Lemon Crinkle Cookies recipe. It’s the ever popular holiday version that is chewy, minty and just divine! My favorite way to enjoy a candy cane!
Why You’ll Love Candy Cane Cookies
These candy cane sugar cookies have simple, everyday ingredients (most that you already have in your pantry!) to make soft, chewy and delicious peppermint cookies. Perfect for the Christmas season because this recipe uses peppermint candy canes! YUM! They add a touch of holiday cheer to cookie platters and are a fun and decorative addition to your holiday parties.
Candy Cane Cookies Tips and Tricks
I love a soft, chewy and pepperminty cookie, especially at Christmas. So, if you have made a few of my Christmas cookie recipes before, odds are you will like this recipe as written. Here are some tips and tricks to get you cookies that look just like mine!
Baking Time. 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.
Peppermint. The addition of peppermint extract takes these to the next level of festive! Try adding a few drops of peppermint extract to the dough. Start with 1/2 teaspoon and work up from there.
Spreading. If your cookies are spreading too much, it’s because there isn’t enough flour. The butter to flour ratio is off…happens a lot with cookies because everyone measures their flour a little differently. Try adding in 1 tablespoon of flour and baking one cookie to see if you get that signature cookie dough texture.
Ingredients Needed for Candy Cane Cookies
Here is everything you need to make these cookies! Most are pantry staples that you probably already have!
- candy canes– you can buy peppermint candy canes and crush them yourself, or buy pre-crushed peppermint candies.
- butter– use real butter, not margarine for these cookies. Some readers have had problems making these and it’s because they used margarine.
- granulated sugar– to sweeten.
- vanilla extract– for flavoring.
- 1 egg– for structure and texture.
- salt– balances out the flavors.
- baking powder + baking soda– this gives the cookies their rise and texture.
- all purpose flour– this fills the cookie out and gives them some structure.
- powdered sugar– rolling the dough in powdered sugar (confectioner’s sugar) puts the crinkle onto these cookies.
How to Make Candy Cane Cookies
This is a simple cookie dough with crushed peppermint candies mixed in. For full recipe details, including ingredient measurements and baking time see the printable recipe card down below. Here is step by step what you can expect when making this recipe:
Prep
Preheat your oven to 350° F. Spray light colored cookie sheets with nonstick cooking spray, line with parchment paper or use silicone baking mat and set aside.
Crush Candy Canes
Throw the candy canes into a plastic zip top bag and bang them up with a rolling pin or mallet. I didn’t even unwrap the candy canes. Once they’re crushed, you can pick out the plastic wrappers. I had a few bigger chunks of candy cane, but for the most part, these were pretty small.
Make Candy Cane Cookie Dough
In a large bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and granulated sugar together until light and fluffy. This is a super important step for soft cookies. Whip in vanilla extract and egg. Scrape sides and mix again.
Measure out your baking powder, baking soda and salt and stir it into your flour. Excluding the powdered sugar, dump all your dry ingredients into the bowl and mix until it’s just incorporated. Scrape sides of the bowl and mix again briefly.
Add in Crushed Candy Canes
Add in the crushed candy canes. I don’t know about you but I could eat this whole bowl of dough. Come to momma.
Form Into Balls + Roll in Powdered Sugar
Pour powdered sugar into a separate bowl or large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on prepared baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.
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. Mine were done in 8 minutes on the nose. Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.
Storing Candy Cane Cookies
Store cooled cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for about a week. Obviously, the longer they sit, the less fresh they will be! Nothing a quick zap in the microwave can’t handle though.
To Freeze: Place baked and cooled cookies into a freezer safe, airtight container with parchment paper separating the layers. Cookies will stay fresh in the freezer for up to 3 months. Allow to thaw on the counter.
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
- Chewy Chocolate Fudge Cookies with Peppermint Glaze
- Chocolate Mint Cookies
- Perfect Shortbread Cookies
- Christmas Shortbread Cookies
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! 🙂
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.
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.
Nutrition
Calories: 113kcal | Carbohydrates: 18g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 4g | Saturated Fat: 2g | Cholesterol: 16mg | Sodium: 66mg | Potassium: 15mg | Sugar: 12g | Vitamin A: 130IU | Calcium: 5mg | Iron: 0.4mg
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 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!