Chai Spiced Sugar Cookies

Add some holiday flavour to these drop Christmas cookies with this simple recipe for chai spiced sugar cookies with cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg and allspice.

I think it’s about time or a new holiday cookie and this recipe for chai spiced sugar cookies should be added to your holiday baking this year. If you’re looking for a holiday treat that’s a little less-indulgent, try my whole wheat gingerbread muffins – but if you’re looking for cookies, I think you need to try this recipe. And if you love chai spiced treats, you’ll also love my chai hazelnut shortbread bars.

Every year, I work on at least one new kind of cookie and this year, it’s been all about these chai spiced sugar cookies. They are a simple drop cookie (no need to roll, cut and decorate) and are loaded with aromatic spices like cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg and allspice in a way that isn’t overpowering. You could even do a delicious glaze or drizzle them with white chocolate, but I opted just to keep things simple this year.

Baking and sharing holiday cookies with my friends and family is something that I’ve been doing forever but I find that I always have difficulty finding the perfect festive containers to give my cookies in and this year I’ve found that GLAD’s special holiday collection of food storage containers are the perfect gift-giving container.

I used the Tall Entree Containers which is the perfect size for cookies (they also have the most adorable holiday-inspired food wrap and freezer zipper bags). The special holiday collection not only looks festive (they are printed with winter motifs) but with their tight-sealing lids you can be confident that your cookies will stay fresh and won’t spill out.

This is a serious concern; last year, I was using a festive holiday tin for my cookies and it somehow opened during a car ride and the cookies went everywhere. All over the floor of my car.

Wasted cookies and frustration is not a way to get in the holiday spirit, I promise. No bueno. The good news is, I’ve been using GLAD containers for food storage for years and I trust these containers so I don’t have to worry about this happening again.

When I was little, we’d bake and decorate sugar cookies to bring in to class parties. As I got older, I started making tons of different varieties to give to my friends and neighbours in December, and I always packaged them up in festive containers to be dropped off around Christmas.

This has been a tradition that makes me so happy because everyone loves getting cookies. I’ll be honest though, holiday baking can get a little stressful at times. I mean when you have dozens and dozens of cookies on every single surface in your kitchen, there is always a moment of “WHY am I doing this!!”, it’s that messy-middle thing that seems to happen far too often in pretty much everything.

You know when you decide to reorganize a room and suddenly there is stuff everywhere and you sit down and look around and think “What have I done.”. Or when there is a bit of change going on in life, there is always that messy period in the middle where you’re questioning and thinking “Was this really a good idea?”.

This December has been pretty insane so I’ll be scaling back my regular holiday baking extravaganza – I’m hoping to avoid that “messy middle”. Instead, I’m focusing on bringing cookies to a couple of holiday potlucks I have coming up and then to my family’s Christmas dinner (I bring cookies every year).

So which cookies do I plan on packing up this year? Well, you can almost guarantee these chai spiced sugar cookies will be there as well as my chocolate ginger molasses cookies (I like to make this dough ahead of time and freeze it) and my simple tea-flavoured shortbreads. These are two varieties of cookies that are easy to make and perfect for the holiday season.

Chai Spiced Sugar Cookies

4.50 from 2 votes

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Prep: 10 minutes

Cook: 15 minutes

Total: 25 minutes

Servings: 30

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp cardamom
• ¼ tsp nutmeg
• ¼ tsp ginger
• ¼ tsp allspice
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 cup butter, at room temperature
• 1 ¼ cups granulated sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 325F and line a baking sheet with parchment.
• In a medium bowl, whisk flour with baking soda, spices and salt.
• In the bowl of a standmixer, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add egg yolks and vanilla extract. Slowly add in flour mixture – the dough may seem dry at first but keep mixing at a low speed and it will incorporate.
• Scoop dough into 1-inch balls and place 2 inches apart on a baking sheet.
• Bake in the centre of the oven for 12-15 minutes, allow to cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Did you try this recipe?Leave a comment + rating and let me know what you think!