There’s a lot to be said for beautiful and complicated holiday cookies (and we’ve baked some of those this holiday season!), but there’s also a lot to be said for slice-and-bake cookies. To wit, Travis and I had fun baking some today (thanks to the vegan sugar cookie dough from Sweet Loren’s). We then talked about the symbolism behind some of December’s holiday cookies before adding the following decorations.

Christmas:

Chewy Chunks: Who knew? Dried fruits and nuts (traditionally numbering up to 13 ingredients) originally represented Jesus and the Apostles, hence the ubiquitous holiday fruit cake. We didn’t use quite that many different dried fruits, but we did chop up raisins, prunes, dried apricots, and dried cranberries, then pressed into the top of the dough before baking.

Festive Fruit Strips: Fruit leather cut into strips makes candy cane stripes on a round cookie. Here was another “who knew” moment: the shape of a traditional candy cane is meant to represent a shepherd’s crook!

Hanukkah:

Jelly Doughnuts: Fried treats like jelly doughnuts represent the oil that lasted for 8 days during the miracle of Hanukkah. To turn them into cookie form, we pressed our thumbs into the center, filled each with about 1/4 teaspoon jelly, and sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Latke Cookies: Likewise representing the oil, here was a way to turn potato latkes into cookie form! Travis helped smash potato chips with mallet, then we dipped the top of the sugar cookie dough into the crushed cookies before baking.

These were all so easy and yet so delicious!