Bring a touch of nostalgia to your holiday baking with these old-fashioned Christmas pinwheel cookies! Their vibrant swirls of red, green, and white make them a festive favorite, while their soft texture and classic flavor capture the magic of the Christmas past. Perfect for cookie exchanges, gift boxes, or sharing with loved ones, these cookies are as fun to make as they are to eat.
What are Pinwheel Cookies?
Pinwheel cookies are soft and colorful sugar cookies made by layering and rolling three different colors of dough to create a striking spiral pattern. Once shaped, the dough is rolled in festive sprinkles, chilled, and sliced to reveal beautifully swirled cookies. They’re a slice-and-bake cookie, just like my Slice and Bake Rum Cookies, and they’re super easy to make!
These cookies are perfect for adding color to your holiday cookie box. In this recipe, I’ve used red and green food coloring to make them ideal for Christmas, but you can customize them with any colors you like! A favorite variation of mine includes alternating layers of vanilla and chocolate dough with cocoa powder for a classic chocolate pinwheel cookies twist.
If you love vibrant Christmas cookies, check out my Peppermint Shortbread Cookies! These are dipped in chocolate, sprinkled with crushed candy canes, and decorated in red and green for an extra festive touch.
For more classic favorites, don’t miss my buttery Italian Butter Cookies or my delicate, nutty Almond Crescent Cookies. These recipes are perfect for rounding out your Christmas cookie tray with a mix of colors, flavors, and textures!
Why you Will Love This Recipe
- Festive and Eye-Catching: These vibrant pinwheel cookies bring holiday cheer with their bright red, green, and white swirls, rolled in colorful sprinkles. They’re perfect for cookie exchanges, gift boxes, or adding a festive touch to your dessert table.
- Easy to Make: Despite their impressive look, these cookies are surprisingly simple to prepare! The slice-and-bake method makes them beginner-friendly, and the dough is easy to work with.
- Customizable: You can stick to the classic Christmas colors or customize the dough for other holidays or occasions. Try combining chocolate and vanilla layers for a delicious variation, or experiment with different sprinkle styles for a unique touch.
Key Ingredients
To make these swirl cookies, you will need:
- Butter – I almost exclusively use unsalted butter for baking, and add a pinch of salt to the cookie dough. You can salted butter and skip the salt if preferred, but you will have less control over how much salt goes into your cookie dough.
- Flour and Baking Powder – You need all-purpose (plain) flour, and baking powder to give the cookies some lift.
- Sugars – We are using white granulated and light brown sugar for flavor, structure, and chewiness.
- Egg – One large egg is what you need here, and a large egg is the standard for baking.
- Pure vanilla extract – can be substituted with other extracts such as almond extract, rum, peppermint, orange or lemon for more variations of the cookies.
- Gel Food Coloring – You will not be able to get these deep, vibrant Christmas colors with liquid food color drops. To create these tones I started with at least ½ teaspoon of Americolor gel coloring (super red and leaf green) and added more until I was happy with the colors.
How to Make Pinwheel Cookies
Success Tips
- Refrigerate the Dough Properly: Chilling the dough is essential for maintaining the shape of the cookies. If you skip this step, the dough will be too soft to roll and cut neatly, and the cookies may spread too much during baking.
- Use Room Temperature Butter: Softened butter is key for creating a smooth dough that blends evenly with the other ingredients. Cold butter won’t cream properly, and melted butter will make the dough too sticky.
- Roll the Dough Evenly: Roll each layer of dough to the same thickness for uniform spirals. If the layers are uneven, the cookies may look lopsided or bake unevenly.
- Use Gel Food Coloring: I use AmeriColor gel food coloring for vibrant colors, and it’s my favorite because you don’t need much to achieve bold, festive hues. Gel coloring is also better than liquid, as it won’t make the dough too wet or sticky.
- Work Quickly Once Layered: Once you’ve layered and rolled the dough, wrap it tightly and refrigerate it promptly to prevent the layers from blending together or becoming too soft.
- Use a Sharp Knife for Slicing: A dull knife can squish the log and distort the spiral pattern. Wipe the knife clean after each slice to ensure neat, crisp cuts.
Storing Tips
- Store baked cookies in layers separated by plastic wrap or wax paper in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days, or in the fridge for up to 10 days.
- Don’t leave baked cookies sitting on a countertop uncovered for extended periods of time, they can get stale quite quickly.
- If storing in the fridge, allow them to come to room temperature before serving.
Freezing
- Freeze unbaked cookies on sheet pans for an hour, then transfer them to Ziploc bags for up to 3 months. When ready to bake, remove them from the freezer 30 minutes before baking and leave them on a sheet pan. Bake as instructed in the recipe card.
- To freeze baked cookies, allow them to cool down completely after baking, then freeze them in Ziploc bags or an airtight container for up to 3 months. Thaw in the fridge overnight before serving.
More Christmas Cookie Recipes
Peppermint Shortbread Cookies
Kolaczki (Polish Cookies)
Italian Rainbow Cookies
Classic Italian Butter Cookies
Get in the holiday spirit with these perfect Pinwheel Cookies! Pin it to your holiday cookies board so that you’re ready for the season.
Did you make this? Be sure to leave a review below and tag me on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest!
Christmas Pinwheel Cookies
Ingredients
- 3 cups (360 g) all purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (225 g) unsalted butter softened to room temperature
- ½ cup (100 g) light brown sugar
- ½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
- 1 large egg at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon each red and green food coloring
- ½ cup Holiday sprinkles
Instructions
- In a mixing bowl combine flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
- In a separate mixing bowl, cream the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until smooth, about 2 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and mix well.
- Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until no streaks of flour remain.
- Divide the dough into 3 equal portions, add red coloring to one, green to another, and leave the final portion white. Mix until uniformly colored.
- Roll each color of dough on a lightly floured surface into a roughly 12×8 inch (30×20 cm) rectangle. Layer the dough with the green, then white, then red.
- Starting for the long end, tightly roll the dough until you have a log. Roll the log in the sprinkles and wrap with plastic wrap. The log will likely lengthen slightly as you roll it. Place into the fridge to chill for at least 3 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C) or 160°C if using a fan oven, and line three baking sheets with parchment paper, and set aside.
- Slice the cookies into ¼ inch slices, and place cut side down on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until slightly puffed and lightly golden.
- Cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes:
- I normally rotate my cookies halfway through baking so they will cook evenly.
- This recipe makes about 3-4 dozen cookies, and will depend on how tightly you roll them.
- The secret to these cookies is keeping the dough chilled so when you slice into them, the colors stay firm. I had dough from the trimming, and it was a really pretty swirl of mixed colors, so I baked those too.
Nutrition Information
This website provides approximate nutrition information for convenience and as a courtesy only. Nutrition data is gathered primarily from the USDA Food Composition Database, whenever available, or otherwise other online calculators.
© Little Sunny Kitchen
Emelle says
Shouldn’t the instructions for doubling the recipe say divide colored dough twice and make two logs?
Little Sunny Kitchen says
You are correct! Unfortunately the system used to do those calculations doesn’t allow for changing numbers in the actual instructions, only the ingredients. I’m glad you figured it out.
Lisa says
Had a hard time rolling out the dough and rolling it up. The dough was very crumbly and kept coming apart.
Little Sunny Kitchen says
It’s possible that your dough had a bit too much flour in it. Be sure to measure by scooping the flour loosely into the measuring cup and then leveling it off.
Gloria says
Can I just freeze the whole log and bake them closer to the holiday ?
Lauren says
you don’t give a temperature for baking?
Diana says
It’s 350°F/180°C. Enjoy!
Tina says
So festive and simple. I will be trying these this Christmas, thank you!