These are my beautiful mom’s famous holiday cookies that many people have asked me about! I grew up eating these cookies every Christmas and Easter and some of my best holiday memories involve these cookies. I must admit, I didn’t realize how much I took these cookies for granted until I was married and out of the house. I miss the winter and spring days when I could run to the kitchen whenever I wanted and munch on these cookies all day long. My mom would make a few batches every couple of weeks until the end of Egyptian Christmas in January or Easter during the spring. She made sure to always make extra to hand out to family and friends. It was something EVERYONE looked forward to every year.
The ingredients for these cookies are very precise. My mom always tells me it took a while for her to find just the right measurements for each ingredient to make sure the texture was perfect for baking. You’ll have to use a Cookie Press machine (pictured above) so it’s important the dough is not too thick, otherwise it will be very difficult to push it through the machine.
You can see from the photo above that the dough in this recipe is very light and crumbly looking. Once baked, the cookies have a sweet, buttery flavor that’s extremely addicting. I promise you won’t be able to eat just one.
As I mentioned earlier, a Cookie Press machine is highly recommended for this recipe! They are usually very cheap and they come with at least a dozen different shapes already in the kit. It’s extremely easy to use a cookie press for this recipe. You just switch out the different discs depending on what shape you want and you press the trigger a few times to dispense the shaped cookie unto the baking pan. As you can see from the photo above, the cookies come out perfectly formed every time!
Then comes the fun part: decorating the cookies! Since it’s Christmas time, these particular cookies were decorated as such. You can use sprinkles, mini chocolate chips, or cookie icing. You can even dip the cookies in melted chocolate once they’re done baking and give them a chocolaty candy shell. Get creative and have fun with this part. The cookies still taste amazing no matter what you put on them!
I’m very happy to finally be sharing this recipe with everyone. I feel like such a true Egyptian being able to make these cookies on my own. I’m very blessed that my momma shared this one with me. It is one of her most popular recipes and once you try them, you’ll know why! So please give them a go and let me know what you think! Also, check out my mom’s Egyptian Chocolate Shortbread Cookies that I made as well. 🥛 ⭐ 💛 🎄 🎅
PREP TIME: 20 minutes
BAKE TIME: 12-14 minutes
MAKES: About 36 cookies
