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Chewy Frosted Cinnamon Swirl Snickerdoodles with pockets of cinnamon swirl and a sweet cream cheese icing. These are yummmmy! Homemade snickerdoodle cookies, made with browned butter, chunks of cinnamon that melt into wonderful swirls, and a small pinch of flaky sea salt. Each cookie dough ball is rolled with cinnamon sugar for that classic snickerdoodle finish before baking to perfection, then topped with creamy icing. There’s nothing not to love about these sweet Christmas cookies.
Cookies! Tis’ the season! And man oh man, I have baked up a lot of cookies this week. I had quite a few failures until I landed on these. But these – oh these are extra special and worth all the testing time.
Oh, how I adore these cinnamon cookies. They’re Christmas time in a nice big, chewy, snickerdoodle(ish) cookie. They’re a new holiday favorite.
Here’s the story, I’ve been testing a lot of cookies! And I am finally close to completing my 2022 Christmas cookie box, which I’m excited to share soon. But all the cookies came with a lot of failed recipes.
Failed recipes are sad in the moment, but often times they lead me to some of my very favorite recipes. After I worked and worked on a new gingerbread recipe, I decided to completely switch gears and move on to cinnamon cookies.
I just needed to forget about gingerbread for the moment. Once I did, I dreamt these up. They’re my favorite chewy snickerdoodle cookies. Swirled with chunks of buttery cinnamon and notes of brown butter and vanilla. Then iced with creamy icing. I envisioned these like a cinnamon roll cookie, so the icing was needed.
Cream cheese icing, but not too sweet. Tis’ so delicious glazed over each cookie.
Here are details
Make the cinnamon swirl first. It’s just brown sugar mixed with butter and cinnamon. Exactly what you’d roll a cinnamon roll up with!
Now crumble the cinnamon into chunks and then freeze. It’s not fancy at all.
While the chunks freeze, make the cookies.
Start by browning half of your butter. It’s one stick of browned butter, and one stick of soft. This gives you the flavor of browned butter but leaves you with a cookie that has great texture too. Shocker, I know, I added browned butter (yes, I may have a browned butter fetish). But the browned butter really does add so much to cookies. It’s worth the extra step.
Then add brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Mix together, then add all the dry ingredients – flour, baking soda, and salt.
By now the chunks should be frozen, mix them into the cookie dough and scoop out all your cookies. In classic snickerdoodle form, take each dough ball and roll through cinnamon sugar.
I do a light roll as I didn’t want the cookies to be overly sweet. Bake them up until they are barely set on the edge. Remove the pan and let the cookies cool on the baking sheet. The cookies continue to bake on the warm sheet.
For the icing. I suppose it’s not needed, but it’s certainly delicious, and I think it balances all the cinnamon in the cookie.
Cream cheese, milk, vanilla, and sugar. It’s thick and creamy, just the way we want it!
These are soft and gooey in the center. The best kind of cookie. I’m not normally such a decadent cookie person, but as I always say, I like to really do it up for the holidays. They only come once a year, so let’s just have fun and enjoy every minute of the season.
It’s cheesy, but the holidays do only come once a year!
Looking for other Christmas cookies? Here are my favorites:
Easy Vanilla Bean Christmas Lights Cookies
Easy Hot Chocolate Lace Cookies
Lastly, if you make these Chewy Frosted Cinnamon Swirl Snickerdoodles, be sure to leave a comment and/or give this recipe a rating! Above all, I love to hear from you guys and always do my best to respond to each and every comment. And of course, if you do make this recipe, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram! Looking through the photos of recipes you all have made is my favorite!
Chewy Frosted Cinnamon Swirl Snickerdoodles
Servings: 20 cookies
Calories Per Serving: 192 kcal
Nutritional information is only an estimate. The accuracy of the nutritional information for any recipe on this site is not guaranteed.
Ingredients
Cinnamon Swirl
- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
- 4 tablespoons salted butter, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
Cookies
- 2 sticks (1 cup) salted butter, at room temperature
- 3/4 cup dark brown sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
Icing
- 2 ounces cream cheese
- 2-3 tablespoons milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
Instructions
- 1. To make the cinnamon swirl. In a bowl, mix the butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Line a small baking sheet with parchment. Crumble/tear the cinnamon mix over the baking sheet, creating small chunks, no more than 2 teaspoons in size. They should be small like chips. Freeze 10 minutes, until firm.2. To make the cookies. Add 1 stick butter to a skillet set over medium heat. Cook until the butter begins to brown, about 3-4 minutes. Remove from the heat and transfer to a heatproof bowl. Freeze 10-15 minutes, but no longer.3. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.4. In a bowl, beat together the remaining stick of butter, the cooled browned butter, and the brown sugar until combined. Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time, until combined. Add the vanilla, beating until creamy. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Fold in the frozen cinnamon chunks. 5. Mix the sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Roll the dough into rounded tablespoon size balls and then roll through the cinnamon sugar. Place 3 inches apart on the prepared baking sheet. 6. Bake for 8 minutes, rotate the pan and bake another 1-3 minutes or until the cookies are just beginning to set on the edges but still doughy in the center. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet. They will continue to cook slightly as they sit. 7. Meanwhile, make the icing. Melt the cream cheese in the microwave, stirring until smooth, 15-20 seconds. Whisk in the milk and vanilla. Add the powdered sugar, whisking to combine. Add milk, if needed, to thin. Spread or drizzle each cookie with icing. Eat warm or let cool and store in an airtight container for up to 4 days. The icing will harden/dry enough to stack.
Notes
Freezing:Â the cookie dough balls can be frozen for up to 3 months. Then just thaw and bake as directed.Â
Hi Tieghan! I am making these for our annual Christmas open house and am so excited to serve them to our guests! I’m wondering if you think I can make the dough today and let it sit overnight in the fridge and then scoop and bake tomorrow. Just trying to be as efficient as possible! Thank you!!
Hi! Thank you so much for giving the recipe a try! Hope you have an amazing Christmas! xT
While these cookies are absolutely delicious, I gave only a four-star rating due to the degree of difficulty. Several issues: the instructions to make the cinnamon crumble are not helpful. It’s not crumble-able at all. So I spread it on parchment, smoothed it out a bit, then chilled it and chopped it to get it into chocolate-chip size pieces, which I then refrigerated until it was time to fold into the cookie batter. The chips then swirled into the batter better than if they remained frozen chunks, which some commenters said contributed to uneven baking results. Also, the dough needed to be chilled for a bit after mixing the chips in, as it was so sticky as to be unmanageable (due to the sheer quantity of butter in the recipe). The recipe says it produces about 20 cookies (!?) – yeah, if you make them plate-size! But the recipe says to drop rounded tablespoonfuls, which I did, and which produced nearly four dozen normal-sized cookies. I foolishly mixed up two batches, thinking one batch would make only 20 cookies. I didn’t read the reviews until after I mixed the first batch and saw the multiple suggestions to add more flour to prevent collapsing. Second batch I added an additional 1/4 cup flour – didn’t seem to make any noticeable difference, but then mine didn’t collapse when baking because I chilled the dough. Also, what snickerdoodle recipe doesn’t have cream of tartar in it? Isn’t that what gives snickerdoodles their distinct flavor? As an experienced baker, I knew that the white sugar and cinnamon listed among the cookie ingredients was for the coating, not to be mixed into the batter, but a novice might not know that, so those ingredients maybe should be separated out. I haven’t even gotten to the frosting step yet – I’m exhausted and saving that for tomorrow!
Hi Sheryl! I am so sorry this recipe was much more work than you planned! Thank you for giving it a try! xT
The best cookie I’ve ever made! Took a couple tries to get it perfect but it came out better when I made them in stages. The chips take forever to set aside so I would freeze them ahead of time. Refrigerating the batter before folding in the chips made it much better so the cinnamon chips didn’t start melting or separate. Lastly I made my cookie balls and refrigerated then baked them the following day. Overall very time consuming but came out amazing!
Hi Alyssa! Thank you so much for giving this recipe a try! So glad to hear you enjoyed it! xT
I love this recipe! I read the comments about the cookies spreading before rolling the dough, so I tried sticking the dough in the fridge for 20 minutes, rolled the dough into balls, and then put the dough balls into the freezer for 15 minutes. That helped keep the cookies from spreading! They taste absolutely amazing, great recipe as always! 🙂
These cookies were very good, yet there is a few problems. First, these cookies were so hard to make it said 45 minutes, it took over a hour! Also these cookies were so flat and when we put them in the oven they expanded 6 inches out, so they were touching. Did I mention how watery the “icing” was? It could be mistaken for melted whip cream! Over all they tasted good I would just try to find a better recipe.
Thank you so much Megan! xT
Could you make this in large batches or should you only make one batch at a time? I want to make about 5x the recipe but I know sometimes recipe a don’t even double well. Should I just make the batches individually?
Thanks!!!
Hi Gianna! I haven’t ever tried that before but that should be fine! xT
Not sure why- but mine did not fluff up at all. They melted all over the pan. And then they cooled too hard and I couldn’t get the flat pancake off the pan in one piece. So, although they smelled good, they will now be inserted into snickerdoodle homemade ice cream.
Hi Meg! Oh no I’m so sorry about that! I would maybe addd more flour to the dough! xT
I followed the instructions a little too closely because I browned all the butter so I wish it was a little more clear in the bottom, printable instructions that you should brown half of the butter (and not the whole stick). I fixed the mistake by just finding a different recipe to make (which also turned out great)! Otherwise, my cookies came out beautifully! This was a crowd favorite and widely enjoyed. It’s already on my list to make for next year’s Christmas Cookie box!!
Hi Katrina! So glad that you loved this recipe! xT
Glad to know I was not alone in the cookie fail. The cinnamon butter mixture melted all over. While the cookie stayed sort of in a ball. Was so looking forward to these. It’s a lot of ingredient to have had a fail. Will have to try and recover somehow. Thanks for all you do. Really do love your site and recipes.
Hey Jamie! I am so so sorry! Thank you for letting me know! xT
I just made these and … WOW!!! They’re fabulous! Mine don’t turn out as pretty and flat as yours, maybe butter was too cold? But they’re absolutely delicious. My husband isn’t a dessert guy nor a cream cheese guy… he ate one and was so surprised by how yummy it was. The cream cheese frosting doesn’t overwhelm the cookie, it’s a subtle flavorful addition. Thank you for another amazing recipe, Tieghan!!
Thank you SO much for giving this recipe a try! Hope you have an amazing rest of your week! 🙂 xT
Just got finished and they are awesome! Followed recipe to the tee and they came out perfect. Will post pic on insta! Delish too, as always 🙂
Thank you so so much for giving this recipe a try! Have an amazing holiday season! 🙂 xT
I love these cookies! I do have a difficult time getting the frosting to set properly, it remains sticky even after drying overnight. Any suggestions? Last time I tried extra cream cheese, only 2 tbsp on milk. I have more frozen in the fridge, any ideas? Thanks!
Fail. This recipe doesn’t work. I would consider tweaking it and reposting. Even with extra flour added to my second tray the cinnamon crumble just leaks out making a not very nice looking cookie.
Hi Jess! I’m really sorry you didn’t enjoy this recipe! Thanks for the feedback! 🙂 xT
Failed desperately. They are becoming immediate family cookies. Followed step by step maybe altitude difference? But you are Colorado, I’m Canadian mountains. The “balls” turned into hard core spread em out sheet pan cookies. 20min freeze. Where could I have gone sideways?
Hi Erin! I’m so sorry about that! So the cookies spread out too much? If so, I would maybe add a bit more flour? I’m so sorry again! Let me know how I can help xT
2nd time making these and once again they will not last long enough to use for cookie plates. They are a crowd favorite!!! They are flat yet chewy and so flavorful. The icing makes the cookie, takes a bit to harden – which enables them to be eaten easily sitting on counter. So easy and yet so good
Love to hear that! Thank you Cara! xT
So sad these did not work out at all. I followed the recipe and my cookies did not come out chewy or flat. The frozen bits stuck to the pan and the rest of the cookie spread everywhere. Also, flavor wise it wasn’t great. I seriously love the rest of your recipes but this one just did not work.
Hi Laura,
Thanks for trying these cookies and sharing your feedback, so sorry to hear they didn’t turn out for you! Any chance your dough was too warm? For a flatter cookie I like to bang my baking sheet on the counter. Again, so sorry! xx