Ho, ho, ho…Merry Christmas Jell-O Cookies! For the past year the most visited and pinned post on my blog has been my ever-popular Jell-O Cookies. We’re at 92,000+ pins and that has been amazing! Sharing the recipe I had acquired in my early married days has been a lot of fun. But I have been adapting the ingredients a bit, tweaking it to accommodate the supplies I have on hand, making it more appealing visually and amping up the flavor. So, since Jell-O cookies were part of my holiday cookie baking this year, I’ve decided to share the updated info.
First, rather than make you go back to revisit the first posted recipe, I’ll just repeat it…with the changes, of course!
Ho Ho Ho…Merry Christmas Jell-O Cookies
(* indicates changes – this is for one batch, one color at a time!)
*3/4 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
*1/2 cup Jell-O ( I used raspberry and lime flavor – I buy the big restaurant size now so that I can add just a little extra to the 3oz amount in the small package of Jell-O. )
Cream the above ingredients. Add:
2 eggs
*1 teaspoon lemon extract
Cream the eggs and lemon extract into the sugar mixture. Add:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Gel or paste food color – I don’t need it for the raspberry…the color is strong enough. I added green to get it to the color I wanted
Red and pink or lime and dark green chunky, colored sugars
Mix well. The dough will be fairly soft, but not sticky. You don’t need to refrigerate the dough before rolling into balls. I use a cookie scoop to make the cookies uniform in size.
Pre-heat the oven to 400°. Roll into 1″ to 1 1/4″ balls; set on a plate. For these Christmas Jell-O cookies, I decided to amp up the color, so I mixed a bright pink and red sugars (or lime green and dark green) together to roll the cookie balls into. Place on a cookie sheet, about 2″ apart; flatten slightly with the bottom of a bowl. Finally, sprinkle the darker color on top of the flattened cookie – be generous! Bake for 6 minutes. If you do it for longer, the bottom of the cookie will start to brown and that will also make the cookie crunchier…don’t spoil the cookie by over-baking it!
These cookies sparkle like they are covered with rubies! They were delightfully shiny and festive…
…rubies and emeralds!
We didn’t decorate sugar cookies this year, but we made a pile of cake pops!
I must say that the abundance of color made me very happy…plus the color helped me keep track of the flavor of the cake inside! Pink straws were pink lemonade, green straws were a white cake with red and green sprinkles (which turns an amazing shade of Grinch green when all smooshed together), blue straws were triple chocolate and the red straws were red velvet with finely chopped Hershey’s Candy Cane Kisses sprinkled over the white chocolate coating. They were all quite delicious and it was fun to share my love of cake pops with my family and friends!
The year is almost over, but the new year is filled with the promise of fun and adventure. Here’s to a wonderful 2013…and may all your Jell-O cookies be bright!
My recipe calls for 3/4 cup shortening, part butter (or margarine)
That was my in my original recipe, but I’ve found that for this recipe, you can use 3/4 cup of butter and it’s delicious.
Can I use a package sugar cookie mix instead of from scratch
I don’t know. Anytime you add ingredients, it’s bound to change the consistency. The sugar that comes in the Jell-O is part of the measurement for the dough. I’ve changed butter for oil in pre-made mixes, but never Jell-O. If you decide to try it, let me know how it works out! Good luck!
Is the Flour, Plain or All-Purpose? Thanks
I’ve not been very good about responding! Not that this will help you at this point, but I almost ALWAYS use all-purpose flour. I’m lazy that way, I guess. I got a really good deal on a 50# bag of pastry flour, and haven’t used it yet, but I just helped a friend make close to 50 (we lost track) pie crust batches for a fund-raiser, so I think I may have to buy a container and break open the new flour to try.
Hi, your first recipe has vegetable shorting, this one does not is there a swap or just an preference to not use it?
The Crisco was in the original recipe. I rarely use Crisco anymore, so I tried making it with all butter and it was even yummier, so that’s how I always do it now. On the Merry Christmas Jell-O cookie recipe, I used the asterisk to identify the changes in the recipe from the original. I really do prefer the butter now, but the Crisco ones are also really good if you have it on hand.
Do you think there’s anything that can replace the Jell-O? Like gelatin powder or instant jelly powder? Cos I’m not from America and where I’m from, we have no Jell-O.. And from what I’ve gathered, jell-o is something like solid chunks of gelatin? It’d be great if you can help, thank you!
Sorry that I missed your question! I tried to do a little research, but since we’re speaking a different “ingredients” language, maybe we could do a little back and forth to try and figure out the difference from what I have and what you have available. “Jell-O” is a brand name for fruit-flavored gelatin powder. It doesn’t get to be solid chunks until you add boiling water, dissolve the powder and then it will start to solidify as it starts to cool, which is usually done in the refridgerator. In this recipe, we don’t add boiling water and make it solid first. The cookies are baked so the ingredients are heated. Since regular “Jell-O” has flavor and sugar, besides the gelatin, plain gelatin powder isn’t what you need. So if you have something that reacts the same way when you add boiling water, you should be able to substitute it. If you can give me more info, I’d be happy to research it a little more!
[…] are not only absolutely delicious, they only take 6 minutes to bake. You can find the recipe at Just Helen. These can also be made for any other holiday besides Christmas, just change the color, shape, or […]
I made these wonderful cookies for a bake sale at a family camping week end where there were several hundred people. I sold them with three in a plastic baggie. (three different colors) How could they resist the bright and cheerful colors!! I sold every single cookie in about 1 hour, with the money going for scholorships for our local high school.
A home run all the way around. This cookie will be a regular from now on at my house! Thank you so much!
That makes me smile because theses colorful, yummy cookies make me happy…and happy to share! Thanks for sharing!
Hi, I was copying down your recipe and I have a question. It says to add a lemon extract, then below it says vanilla. Is it just meant to say vanilla instead of lemon?
Oops! You can use either. When I started making these cookies, I used vanilla, then I started swapping vanilla out for lemon for a little more tart flavor. Both taste good, but it should definitely be an either one or the other. For lemon, orange and lime, I tend to use the lemon extract, but for years I did it with vanilla and loved it. I’ve been buying all sorts of emulsions and I really like those, too. If you’re going to make more than one batch, try both. They all taste good! I will make the adjustment to just say lemon in the post. Thanks for catching that! I also started using butter and no shortening or margarine in the recipe these days.
[…] If you haven’t made them before, you can find the Jell-O cookie recipe can be found here. You can find how to make the sugar here. You can enjoy pictures of the cookies […]
[…] and I love that everyone else seems to love them, too. I changed the recipe a little for the Merry Christmas Jell-O Cookies. Since I am approaching the 100K pin-mark and I thought I would try mixing things up a bit in honor […]
[…] Jell-O Cookies (For a newly modified version of this cookie, check here!) […]