Martha’s All-Time Favorite Christmas Cookies

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Get out your measuring cups, mixing bowls, cookie cutters, and baking trays and get started on your batch of holiday treats. For more cookie tips and inspiration, download our complete holiday cookie guide here.

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Sugar Cookies

These buttery cookies are the ultimate for making cutout cookies in all kinds of shapes (From Partridge-in-a-Pear-Tree to Snowman to Reindeer to Santa Claus Cookies, and so many more). Martha always uses royal icing for decorating.

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Gingerbread Snowflakes

Because it just isn't Christmas without gingerbread! Martha likes to make different sizes of snowflakes, the ones pictured here are larger, but she makes smaller cookies as well. She pipes her cookies with royal icing and sprinkles them with fine sanding sugar.

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Photography: Romulo Yanes

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Hazelnut Sandwich Cookies

Crisp, buttery hazelnut cookies sandwich apricot or raspberry jam and melted chocolate. The cutouts in the top cookies are made with tiny star-shaped cutters.

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Old-Fashioned Lemon Sugar Cookies

Martha loves lemon (it's one of her very favorite flavors), and everyone will adore these classic crisp, citrusy cookies. To get the crinkly tops, the cookies are sprinkled with sanding sugar, then lightly brushed with water and sprinkled with more sanding sugar, then baked.

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Photography: Joseph De Leo

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Chewy Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies

These delicious, deeply flavored cookies are made with fresh ginger, not the usual powdered spice. They have a big chocolaty taste thanks to both semisweet chocolate and cocoa powder. Dark-brown sugar and molasses give a wonderful chewy texture.

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Photography: Joseph De Leo

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Noel Nut Balls

When she makes these pecan cookies, a Kostyra family favorite, Martha portions the dough into larger balls than her mother's recipe calls for. She prefers them with a ratio that makes a nuttier cookie and less confectioners' sugar.

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Shaped Icebox Cookies

Martha has a handy technique for forming logs of cookie dough: She uses a sushi mat (a device usually reserved for forming rolls of sushi). And she prefers Sicilian pistachios for these cookies because they have the best color and contrast nicely with dried apricots, cranberries, and other bright dried fruits.

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Photography: Chris Court

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Brown-Butter Cookies

Another simply exquisite cookie. Browned butter, that is butter that is gently cooked until golden brown, seems to enhance just about anything it's added to. Also try these brown-butter crust lemon bars and this apple pie.

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