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Santa’s Favorite Cookies are soft brown sugar pudding cookies, stuffed with Christmas colored M&M’s and festive sprinkles. I mean, I can only assume these are Santa’s Favorite Cookies. They sure as heck are some of mine!
Okay, so I gotta say. I’m kind of in the mood for Christmas now. Even as recent as a few days ago I was completely bah humbug, but now…now I’m excited for the lights and the music, the family and the parties, and the shopping.
(And the cookies…don’t ever forget the cookies!)
I think my shift in thinking really started a few days before Thanksgiving. Kohls started their online Black Friday sale early and I bought a bunch of stuff for $100. Something about buying all the expensive things and realizing they only cost you about $10 a piece really got me in the mood for the holidays.
I know, shopping got me in the Christmas spirit; somewhere in the North Pole Santa is rolling his eyes.
Speaking of Santa, I happen to know that these are his favorite cookies. I mean, why wouldn’t they be? They’re brown sugar pudding cookies filled with bright firecracker Christmas sprinkles and holiday M&Ms.
Santa’s favorite cookies – well, they are my favorite cookies…why shouldn’t they be his?
This cookie recipe is such an easy one, and it’s totally foolproof. I am so in love with pudding cookies, obviously. You can make so many flavor combinations: chocolate, butterscotch, coconut, lemon. If they make a pudding mix for that flavor, you can make that flavor cookie.
For this pudding cookie recipe, I used all brown sugar, which is the same as the one I made for the 4th of July. I knew I had to replicate that cookie for Christmas because second to red, white, and blue, red and green is my favorite color combo.
(Besides teal and teal, that is.)
The cookie dough mixes together easily, with butter and brown sugar and vanilla pudding mix. Brown sugar and pudding mix by themselves yield super soft and pillowy cookies, but when used together? It’s like a soft cookie to the extreme. And they stay soft for days – no stale cookies here!
(Santa’s favorite cookies would NOT be stale cookies!)
Leave these on a plate with a tall glass of milk or eggnog and Santa will be sure to stop and stay awhile. (If the cookies last that long, that is!)
What are your favorite Christmas cookies??
A few notes about the recipe for Santa’s Favorite Cookies:
- The dough requires chilling, so be sure to plan for that.
- Be sure to use instant pudding mix, not cook-n-serve. You just need one of the small boxes, which is about 3.4 ounces, depending on the brand.
- Get creative – use any flavor pudding mix. Have a craving for butterscotch? Use butterscotch pudding mix. Or coconut. Or chocolate. Or banana…you get my drift.
- Beware: these go down easily. If you want to save them for Santa, be sure to hide some in the freezer. 🙂
Enjoy!
Santa's Favorite Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter softened
- 3/4 cup brown sugar packed
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- 1 3.4 ounces box Instant Vanilla Pudding Mix (not sugar free)
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1/4 cup red and green sprinkles or any colors
- 3/4 cup Christmas M&Ms or any color of M&M
Instructions
- Note: This dough requires chilling.
- Cream butter and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. (You can also use a hand mixer.) Mix in egg and vanilla until smooth. Add pudding mix, baking soda, and salt. Mix until combined. Mix in flour, then stir in sprinkles and M&Ms.
- Scoop 2 tablespoon balls of cookie dough onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment or a silpat baking mat. There’s no need to space them out, you’re going to chill them. Cover and chill for at least 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper or silpat baking mats. Place chilled cookie dough balls 2” apart on cookie sheet. Bake 9-11 minutes or until the edges just start to turn brown. Cool 5 minutes on cookie sheet before transferring to a rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to 4 days or freeze for up to one month.
Recipe Video
Recipe Nutrition
Click here to see more of my Christmas cookie recipes!
More pudding cookie recipes to love:
Triple Dark Chocolate Pudding Cookies
Butterscotch Molasses Pudding Cookies
White Chocolate Peppermint Blossom Pudding Cookies
Sweets from friends:
White Chocolate Snickerdoodle Pudding Cookies by Something Swanky
Chocolate Chunk Peppermint Pudding Cookies by Chef in Training
Biscoff S’mores Pudding Cookies, by Inside BruCrew Life
Chocolate Chunk Pecan Pudding Cookies by Melissa’s Southern Style Kitchen
Love these cookies! The only thing I do different is bake them less. I bake them for 6-7 minutes. They come out perfect for my taste!
These are our favorite Christmas cookies. We have made them for several years now so thank you! This year we will be out of town for a few days. I wanted to maybe make the dough before we leave and bake them Christmas Eve. Do you think the dough would keep ok in the refrigerator for 3 days? Or should I freeze the dough?
I think that will be fine but you might need to let them sit out while you’re preheating the oven (or press them lightly with your palm) since they’ll be super cold.
My kids and I were SO excited to try this recipe! Looked delicious. Followed directions exactly, correct ingredients and correct oven temp. Took them out at 8 minutes to find them completely black and burned on the bottom and still raw inside. Had to dump all of them. Sad kiddos!
Something is wrong with your oven temperature – that should not have happened. Were you baking them on a center rack or too close to the top or bottom of the oven? Do you have an oven thermometer?
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