Christmas Pudding Cookies
Christmas Pudding Cookies are chocolate sugar cookies made to look like traditional Christmas pudding. This classic UK date pudding was my favorite holiday dessert growing up. The cookies are simply decorated with fondant and icing for an extra-festive finish.
If you’re not familiar with Christmas pudding, it is a dried fruit pudding that is traditionally served in the U.K. A Christmas dessert, topped with brandy cream and garnished with holly (picture below).
I realized this blog seriously lacked cookies. I was also in desperate need of Christmas cookies. So I fixed that. Chocolate lovers will love how chocolatey these cookies are and they’re not too sweet.
Holiday cookies for gifts
These cookies make great gifts for teachers. They’re also perfect for thanking your delivery driver or bringing as a holiday hostess gift.
I’m also posting a white chocolate, pistachio and cranberry fudge later this week, which also makes a festive gift.
To reproduce the look of the cream that is drizzled over the pudding, I took a little help from Wilton.com and used their pre-packaged icing.
The icing is easy to use and spreads beautifully and hardens quickly into a smooth frosting.
The holly is made from fondant dyed green, also bought from Wilton and to cut the leaves I used this holly leaf plunger and the berries are red frosting.
If you do choose to give these Christmas pudding cookies as gifts, you could nestle in a wooden box, like cute one I found. Or, place them in cellophane gift bags that are used for party favors that can be found in so many stores and secure them with pretty holiday ribbon. Fun gift and personalized giving.
A delicious drink to enjoy with these cookies is Santa’s Spiked Rum Milk. And don’t forget to leave some for the man himself.
Christmas Pudding Cookies
Ingredients
- ¼ cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, cold cut into small cubes
- ½ cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup (75 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 ½ cups (194 grams) all-purpose flour
- ¼ cup (30 grams) corn starch
- 10 ounces (156 grams) white cookie icing
- 12 ounces (283 grams) green fondant
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375°F/190°C..
- To a mixing bowl with hand blender or stand mixer add the butter, sugar, oil and vanilla. Cream until the sugar is dissolved and smooth then add the egg and mix in well. Don’t over mix.
- Use a spatula to fold in the salt, cocoa powder, flour and corn starch. Mix until there is no flour visible.
- Lay out a large piece of plastic wrap and turn out the dough into the center.
- Cut the dough in half and wrap half in plastic wrap and refrigerate. With the other ½ of the dough add to a sheet of parchment paper and put another sheet of parchment on top. (rolling in parchment stops the rolling pin from sticking to the dough).
- Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thick. Using a 2 inch cookie cutter, cut out rounds and put them onto a parchment covered baking sheet, ½-inch apart.
- Remove the other half of the cookie dough from the fridge and repeat, rolling it out and cutting the cookies.
- Place them all on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove and allow to cool completely on a cooling rack.
- Once cooled, use the white cookie icing to draw the frosting so it looks like it’s dripping down the cookie.
- Roll out the green fondant and cut out the holly. Once the icing is dry, place the holly at the top and in the middle of the icing.
These are so cute Janette!! I can’t stop staring at those perfect snowdrips 😮
Thank you so much Olivia 🙂
Ooo… I’ve never heard of Christmas pudding, but it sounds wonderful! That’s one of the things I love about your blog – I get schooled in classic UK dishes. And your translation into these adorable cookies is just so creative. Beautifully decorated too!
These are super cute ! Love that you used fondant to decorate! Pinned to my Christmas cookie collection!
These cookies look and sound delicious. I **need** that holly leaf plunger – too cute!