19 Best Hanukkah Cookies – Cookies For The Festival Of Lights

Hanukkah (December 18 to 26, 2022), or the Jewish Festival of Lights, is fast approaching, so we’re getting ready by stocking up on menorah candles, finding where we put that dang dreidel, and making our list of all the foods we want to make this year. We don’t know about you, but we don’t intend to run out of delicious traditional and creative foods the entire 8 days. That means everything we’ve got to be ready for appetizers, dinner, and desserts. While sufganiyot and gelt often get all the sweet glory, we’ll never turn down a cookie, so we’ve compiled a list of 19 Hanukkah cookies we think would be the perfect addition to you and your family’s celebrations.

Because cookies aren’t the most traditional of Hanukkah desserts, we’re taking inspiration from ingredients, symbolism, and Jewish tradition for the ones we’ve included here. Some, like our apple cookies, our pistachio chocolate chip cookies (with olive oil instead of butter), and our honey cookies, are featured because they include symbolic ingredients. Others, like our latke cookies or our sugar cookie dreidels, are more tongue-in-cheek and resemble various aspects of Hanukkah traditions. We’ve also included a number of cookies more traditional to other Jewish holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Passover, because they’re delicious and we honestly think they don’t get enough play. Check out our coconut macaroons, our rugelach, or our hamantaschen if you missed them the first time around this year.

Hanukkah was initially not one of the more important Jewish holidays, only becoming so due to its proximity to other secular winter holidays like Christmas. Because of this, many Jewish people get creative (and multicultural) with the way they celebrate. Though we’re not suggesting decorating Santa cookies as you light the menorah, we have included a number of cookies here from or inspired by other cultures—like our bizcochitos, our panettone cookies, or our kolaczki—in case you’d like to do the same.