Honey Butter Cookies

Published November 16, 2019

While the holiday seasons are a festive time to celebrate the seasons, enjoy time with family, and reflect on the year — it’s also a time to remember our service members who won’t be home for the holidays.

Having family members in the military means the holidays are a time to craft care packages, fundraisers, and thank you cards to send to our loved ones who are deployed or stationed far away.

Mailing packages can be challenging, as you want to send favorite items that won’t arrive melted or smooshed. Cookies are popular, as they could be double wrapped. Even slightly stale — homemade cookies are a nice holiday treat when away from your family.

Which is why my sister decided that for her college cooking assignment, she was going to make holiday cookie packages for our service members.

To contribute to the cookie-baking party, I pulled up a Pinterest recipe from The Semisweet Sisters and decided to bake honey butter cookies to include in the holiday packages.

Honey Butter Cookie Ingredients

I originally saved this recipe for its minimal ingredients. I figured if I ever needed an easy, homemade recipe, this would be the one to try.

Centered around the butter, with rich brown sugar and a bit of honey — I thought these cookies would be an elevated version of a sugar cookie recipe.

How to Make Honey Butter Cookies

This recipe is just as easy as my chocolate caramel dipped apples.

These cookies require one bowl and no special ingredients. If you cook or bake frequently, you should already have the base ingredients on hand.

If you’re an extra talented foodie and produce your own honey, these cookies will be even more spectacular. Local farmer’s markets offer seasonal honey too, if you don’t have enough on hand.

If you don’t have a hand mixer nor a KitchenAid, you can use a rubber spoon. As the dough forms, you might have to switch to hand kneading the flour together, as I did. It’s easier and saves time, as the dough can be sticky, and the flour can fall out of the bowl.

The Final Product

Overall Thoughts

Honey Butter Cookie Texture

I was so excited for these cookies. I can tell by the way the dough forms, whether it’ll be light and fluffy.

I love sugar cookies for this reason. They’re doughy, buttery, and light. These honey butter cookies are similar.

When they came out of the oven, they looked like pillowy biscuits they were so tall. As they cooled, the tops of them flatted to look like normal cookies.

The inside of the honey butter cookies was moist like a sugar cookie, though not raw. The bottom of the cookie had a golden crust (but wasn’t crunchy). The flavor wasn’t overly sweet. It wasn’t a short bread, nor a sugar cookie, but you did have the lingering taste of honey on your palette. They’re an overall mellow flavor. I could imagine having them at high tea with jam and clotted cream.

Portion and Serving

I knew from the 3 1/2 cups of flour that this recipe would make a ton of cookies. I used four cookie sheets of cookies, ranging in size from these large 1 1/2 inch cookies, to smaller thumbprint sized cookies.

Making the smaller cookies helped stretch the final amount to 30. The original recipe estimates 25-28 cookies.

I tasted the cookies fresh from the oven (my favorite) — and several hours later. The cookies still had the soft texture — thanks to the two sticks of butter.

Minus the cookies we sampled, we had 25 cookies to wrap and package for the holiday care packages.

Recipe Score

I would give these double chocolate crackle cookies a 10/10 for the following:

• Recipe Level

  • Easy: You don’t have to use fancy equipment to make these delicious honey butter cookies. All you need is a single bowl and a spoon, and you’ll impress your friends and family with these delicious cookies.

• Ingredients

  • This recipe is great if you need to make a last-minute dessert. Most people have flour, brown sugar, honey, and butter on hand. If you have to run to the store to buy an ingredient, it won’t be difficult to find, and it won’t break the bank.

• Prep

  • Preheat your oven and soften the butter — which gives you enough time to measure your ingredients before getting started.
    
    Tip: You can place the sticks of butter on top of the oven to help them soften. But keep an eye, you don’t want them to melt.

• Flavor

  • 10/10: The perfect buttery texture with a hint of honey. These honey butter cookies are a versatile base. You can add other spices and extracts to amplify your favorite flavors, while keeping the golden cookie texture.

K. Martinelli Makes Honey Butter Cookies

Thanks for Watching!

Do you bake care packages for the holidays? Do you have a favorite recipe or item to give? Tell me about it in the comments or browse dessert ideas for your care packages.