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Christmas Sandwich Cookies are two holiday cookies doing the work of one dessert, soft M&M and sprinkle studded cookies hugging fluffy buttercream tinted red, green, and snowy white. My kids call them double decker Santa cookies, and the assembly line of piping and sandwiching is the most fought over job in our December kitchen. If my thumbprint cookies anchor your cookie box, these are the showpiece stacked next to them.
One dough, one buttercream, three colors, and twenty two very impressive sandwiches.
Christmas Sandwich Cookies Quick Look
- 🕒 Prep Time: 15 minutes
- 🌡️ Cook Time: 12 minutes
- ⏳ Total Time: 1 hour
- 🍽️ Serving: 22 sandwich cookies
- ⚡ Calories: 374kcal
- 🌶️ Flavor Profile: Soft vanilla cookie, candy crunch, and sweet buttercream
- ✋ Difficulty: Intermediate, easy steps with a fun assembly line finish
Quick Answer
Stir the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. Cream the butter with both sugars 3 minutes, add the eggs and vanilla, then mix in the dry ingredients. Stir in holiday M&Ms, mini chocolate chips, and sprinkles, roll 2 tablespoon balls slightly taller than wide, and bake at 350 degrees for 11 to 12 minutes. Whip the butter and powdered sugar filling, divide and tint it red, green, and white, pipe a dollop on half the cooled cookies, and top with the rest.
Jump to:
- Christmas Sandwich Cookies Quick Look
- Quick Answer
- Why This Recipe Works
- Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Key Ingredients
- Variations and Substitutions
- How to Make Christmas Sandwich Cookies
- Recipe Tips & Tricks
- Serving Ideas and Suggestions
- Christmas Sandwich Cookies FAQs
- Other Recommended Christmas Cookies
- Christmas Sandwich Cookies
Why This Recipe Works
Click to see the technique science
- Cornstarch is the soft cookie secret. Two tablespoons tenderize the crumb and reduce spread, keeping the cookies thick enough to sandwich without crumbling.
- Tall dough balls fight the spread. Rolling the dough spheres taller than wide compensates for oven melt, so the cookies bake into thick, even rounds.
- The 3 minute cream matters. Fully aerated butter and sugar builds the lift that keeps a candy loaded dough from baking dense.
- Pressing candy on after baking is a stylist trick. Extra M&Ms and sprinkles pushed into the hot cookies land face up and photogenic instead of buried.
- A stiff buttercream holds the sandwich. Five cups of powdered sugar against one cup of butter whips into a filling that stays put when bitten instead of squishing out the sides.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- They look like a bakery holiday special but come from one simple dough.
- The red, green, and white centers make every stack tray worthy.
- One batch makes 22 double decker cookies that carry a tray by themselves, the same crowd math as my cream cheese mints.
Key Ingredients
Standard cookie staples plus the festive candy trio.
- Flour and cornstarch: The cornstarch keeps the cookies soft and thick for sandwiching.
- Butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar: Creamed 3 full minutes for a light, lofty dough.
- Holiday M&Ms, mini chips, and sprinkles: A cup and a half of candy color in every batch.
- Powdered sugar and butter: The fluffy filling, whipped 3 minutes and tinted three ways.
- Red and green gel coloring: Gel gives bold Christmas color without thinning the buttercream.
See recipe card for exact quantities.
Variations and Substitutions
One sandwich format, endless holiday remixes.
- Swap the buttercream for chocolate ganache or cream cheese frosting.
- Use pastel M&Ms and pink filling for a Valentine or Easter version.
- Roll the exposed filling edge in extra holiday sprinkles for a bakery finish.
- Prefer a jam center? My thumbprint cookies fill the holiday tray the fruity way.
- Add a half teaspoon of peppermint extract to the white filling for a candy cane middle.
How to Make Christmas Sandwich Cookies
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line sheet trays with parchment. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt.
- In a stand mixer with the paddle, cream the butter with the granulated and brown sugar for 3 minutes until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time until fully mixed, then stir in the vanilla.
- Slowly stir in the flour mixture until combined, scraping the sides as needed.
- Add the M&Ms and mini chocolate chips.
- Stir to distribute the candy through the dough.
- Add the sprinkles and give the dough a final stir.
- Roll 2 tablespoons of dough per cookie into balls slightly taller than wide to limit spread. Bake 11 to 12 minutes until lightly golden at the edges and dry on top, then press extra candy into the hot tops and cool completely.
- For the filling, cream the butter until smooth, add the powdered sugar gradually, then the salt, vanilla, and milk, and whip on medium high 3 minutes. Divide into three bowls and tint one red and one green.
- Transfer each color to a piping bag and snip the tips.
- Pipe a generous dollop of one color onto the flat bottoms of half the cooled cookies.
- Top each with a second cookie and press gently to spread the filling to the edges. Serve and admire the stack.
Recipe Tips & Tricks
- Cool the cookies completely before filling. Buttercream on a warm cookie slides straight off the edge.
- Match cookie sizes into pairs before piping. A quick sort means every sandwich lines up evenly.
- Use gel food coloring only. Liquid coloring thins the buttercream until it squeezes out of the sandwich.
- Do not overbake. Pull them when the tops look dry and the edges barely turn golden, soft cookies make the best sandwiches.
- Press candy into the hot tops right after baking. That is how the bakery ones get their face up M&Ms.
- Chill the assembled cookies 15 minutes if gifting. A brief chill firms the filling so stacked boxes travel clean.
Serving Ideas and Suggestions
Stack the christmas sandwich cookies on a tiered stand with the red, green, and white fillings alternating, the cookie tray decorates itself.
For a cookie exchange, box them in single layers beside my graham cracker toffee, the buttercream centers stay picture perfect.
Leave two on Santa’s plate with a glass of milk, and keep a batch of my chocolate m&m cookies in reserve for the reindeer crowd.
Store christmas sandwich cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for 3 days or refrigerated up to a week, the cookies soften pleasantly as they sit with the filling. They freeze assembled for up to 2 months with parchment between layers, thaw at room temperature for an hour.
Christmas Sandwich Cookies FAQs
Christmas sandwich cookies are soft vanilla cookies loaded with holiday M&Ms, mini chocolate chips, and sprinkles, baked and then sandwiched in pairs around fluffy buttercream tinted red, green, and white. One batch makes 22 double decker cookies that anchor any holiday cookie tray.
Warm dough or skipped cornstarch, usually. The dough bakes best cool, and the balls should be rolled taller than wide, the extra height melts into a thick, even round. If your kitchen is warm, chill the dough balls 20 minutes before baking, thick cookies are what make sturdy sandwiches.
Whip the filling stiff, this ratio of one cup butter to five cups powdered sugar holds its shape, and press the top cookie gently, just until the filling reaches the edges. Gel food coloring matters too, liquid coloring thins the buttercream into escape mode.
Yes, several ways. The dough balls freeze for 3 months and bake from frozen with a minute added. Baked, unfilled cookies keep airtight for 3 days. Assembled sandwiches hold 3 days at room temperature, a week refrigerated, or 2 months frozen with parchment between the layers.
The red and green holiday milk chocolate M&Ms are the classic, and the minis distribute even better through the dough. After Christmas, the same recipe runs all year, pastels for Easter, red and pink for Valentine’s Day, orange and brown for Halloween, just re match the filling colors.
Make one batch of vanilla buttercream, divide it into three bowls, and tint one red and one green with gel coloring, leaving the third white. Each color goes into its own piping bag, and alternating the centers down the tray gives the full Christmas effect with zero extra work.
Made these Christmas Sandwich Cookies? Leave a comment and a star rating below, and tell me which filling color went first!
Before the Christmas cookies start, my Halloween sugar cookies own October.
Add my sprinkle rolled chocolate blossom cookies to the same Christmas cookie box.
For one more cookie tray star, our Christmas Oreo balls are dressed as Rudolph.
For a centerpiece-worthy treat, our Christmas tree cupcakes steal the table.
Our cake mix red velvet blossom cookies are the easiest thing on the exchange table.
When spring rolls around, our Easter sugar cookies give this sandwich trick a pastel makeover.
Christmas Sandwich Cookies
Ingredients
For the cookies:
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter softened
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- ¾ cup light brown sugar packed
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 ½ cups holiday M&Ms
- ½ cup mini chocolate chips
- ½ cup holiday sprinkles
For the filling:
- 1 cup unsalted butter softened
- 5 cups sifted powdered sugar
- Pinch of fine sea salt
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons whole milk
- Green gel food coloring
- Red gel food coloring
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line sheet trays with parchment paper, set aside.
- In a medium-sized bowl, stir together the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt, set aside.
- In the body of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter with the granulated and brown sugar for 3 minutes until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time until fully mixed, stir in the vanilla.
- Add the flour mixture to the bowl and slowly stir it in until combined. Scrape down the sides as needed.
- Add the M&Ms and chocolate chips, and stir to combine.
- Add the sprinkles and stir to combine.
- Take 2 tablespoons of the dough and roll it into a ball; make them so they are a little bit taller than wide, in a spherical shape to avoid too much spread. Continue with all the dough.
- Bake for 11-12 minutes until lightly golden brown along the edge and the tops appear dry. Do not overbake.
- When they come out of the oven, press more M&M’s, chocolate chips, and sprinkles into the dough for a pretty presentation if desired. Let cool for 10 minutes on the sheet tray, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- While the cookies are baking, make the filling. Cream the butter in the body of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment until smooth.
- Add the powdered sugar a little at a time until fully mixed in. Add the salt, vanilla, and milk. Stir to combine, then place on medium-high speed for 3 minutes until fluffy.
- Divide the frosting evenly between 3 bowls. Add red food coloring to one bowl and green food coloring to another bowl, and stir to combine until you reach your desired color. Leave the last bowl as is.
- Place the frosting in three piping bags or into three plastic bags and snip off the end. Pipe a dollop of each color onto the bottom of half of the cookies. Place another cookie on top and gently press down to form a sandwich. Serve immediately.
Nutrition
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OMG I am in cookie heaven looking at those pictures. I could eat the whole plate full since I am a sucker for M&Ms 🙂
Cookie sandwiches are legit one of my favorite desserts!