My Holiday Cookie Box 2025

Hi hi and welcome to the Holiday Cookie Box Bonanza of 2025! If you've been here for a while you will remember that I used to make super intricate treat boxes, but I haven't done any for years, and instead of making just the one box, this time I wanted to make a bunch of boxes that we could give to friends and family!

I ended up making 10 different items for these boxes which was probably a little over ambitious, but I broke the workload up over a few days which I will include some tips and tricks for. I purchased 10 cookie boxes, but had some cookies leftover after assembling, so I would say that the quantities that I used made enough for 12 boxes easily.

These were SO fun to gift to friends and family and they really loved receiving them. I will definitely do these every year now I think!

Who made the cut: 10 Different Cookies and treats!

It was SO much fun choosing the cookies and treats that I made for this holiday box. I like doing a few things that work well as fillers like caramels and rocky road, a few classic round cookies which required no chilling and I knew I could just bust out, some bars, and then one or two 'fancy' cookies so that you get a really beautiful box when you put it together. Go for a mix of things that are more complicated and easy to make.

1. Funfetti Sugar Cookies

These are a twist on the classic vanilla cookie that is on my website. I made the recipe as written, and used jimmies sprinkles rather than the confetti cookies. These are a no chill cookie that can be ready in about 30 minutes so is super easy.

Get the Recipe: Funfetti Sugar Cookies

2. Checkerboard Cookies

These took me so many tries to get right (getting the dough dimensions nailed down is tricky!) but I love them. They use the same dough as my pinwheel cookies and I also have a super easy zig zag version in the same post too.

Get the Recipe: Pinwheel cookies (notes on checkerboards are in the post!)

3. Homemade Caramels.

These are super easy to make, great to make ahead, and make great filler for popping into any spaces you have in your cookie box. Love them. Make them quite a lot.

Get the Recipe: Soft and Chewy Homemade Caramels

4. Rocky Road.

Again, another easy filler recipe. I just made a single batch of my rocky road - the great thing about this is you can throw whatever you like into it and it's going to be amazing. I did Malteasers, turkish delight, salted roasted peanuts, pretzels, and marshmallows. So good.

Get the Recipe: Homemade Rocky Road

5. Sprinkle Covered Chocolate Cookies

I wanted to do a few little bite sized things in the cookie box and these chocolate cookies are perfect. I just scaled the scoop size down, then dipped them in chocolate and dipped the base in sprinkles - there are notes in the recipe card on how I did that! If you don't want to use sprinkles you can leave them plain, do just chocolate on the bottoms, or dip them in crushed nuts.

Get the Recipe: Chewy Chocolate Cookies

6. Sugar Cookie Bar Christmas Trees

I LOVED how these came out - I used my go-to sugar cookie bar recipe and cut it into triangles then piped frosting onto them in blobs and finished with sprinkles. SO cute, super easy, and it made loads. I doubled the sugar cookie bars and used the other batch for the peppermint chocolate sugar cookie bars. There are notes in the sugar cookie bar post on how to do the cutting and piping of the trees!

Get the Recipe: Sugar Cookie Bars

7. 30 Minute Gingersnap Cookies

These are possibly my favourite recipe on my website? I LOVE them. I made them a little smaller, using a #40 scoop to get slightly smaller cookies than in the recipe, which gave me about 24 cookies.

Get the Recipe: Thin and Crispy Gingersnap Cookies

8. Pistachio Brownies

These were SO good and so fun to have an easy recipe in there to add some chocolate into the mix. I made my Nutella brownies but instead of using Nutella I substituted Pistachio Cream (sweetened pistachio paste) and it was SO good. I did a 1.5x of the recipe and baked in a 9x13" pan but I had loads so you can probably do the recipe as written - I cut them into quite small pieces.

Get the Recipe: Nutella Brownies (Sub Nutella for Pistachio Cream)

9. Shortbread cut-outs

I will never make a cookie box without at least one kind of shortbread. This time I just did a roll-out version of my classic shortbread, and used a super cute pretzel shaped cutter to cut them. I did a double batch because I wanted to use it for something else too, but a single would have worked fine too. Notes on how to make my shortbread a roll-out along with a link to the cutter are in the recipe card of that post!

Get the Recipe: Classic Shortbread Cookies

10. Peppermint Chocolate Sugar Cookie Bars

I was a bit sneaky and doubled up on my sugar cookie recipe because a) it is SO good, and b) with a different frosting these taste totally different. These ones got a coating of shitty chocolate icing then were dusted with candy canes. So good. There are notes in the sugar cookie blog post on the details for these ones!

Get the Recipe: Sugar Cookie Bars

Breaking up the workload for a cookie box

This really depends on how your schedule is, but you can break up the workload by making some of the doughs and even cookies ahead of time. Ideally you want to bake things as fresh as you can, so I like to prep things that can be made ahead and then bake them all off on the same day or over two days. I made my cookie boxes over a few days, and here is how I roughly categorised what could be made when:

A week plus ahead of time: Caramels, Shortbread cookies (cut out cookies and freeze then bake from frozen), checkerboard cookies (cut out cookies and freeze to bake from frozen). Shortbread cookies and checkerboards the dough can also be made a few days ahead and stored in the fridge until ready to use. Funfetti Cookies and gingersnaps can also be made, rolled into balls and the dough balls frozen to bake off.

A few days ahead of time: Brownies (Store in the fridge in an airtight container for a few days), Rocky Road (2-3 days ahead of time is fine, probably longer if you don't use pretzels as a mix-in)

1-2 days ahead of time: Sugar Cookie Bars x2 (can make and frost the day before - the frosting will benefit from an overnight rest to set up), Chocolate Cookies dipped in chocolate and sprinkles, anything that has been made ahead and frozen can be baked off

I bought cookie boxes with the little plastic window on the top which worked great so you can see everything inside. Mine were 23cm squares which fitted everything just perfectly and were manageable to fill. I added a little shredded paper underneath to give the cookies something to sit on.

I think that's it, if you have any questions please let me know and I will do my best to answer them! Happy Cookie Boxing!

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Answers to your baking questions

Over the years, many of you have asked me questions about:

• baking in grams
• adjusting oven temperatures
• what kind of salt to use
• and many more!

I've curated and answered them all for your easy reference in this frequently asked questions post!