Danish Butter Cookies (Piped + Video)

Who else loves the butter Danish cookies that come in a tin during the holidays? Make your own with a few simple ingredients! Our danish butter cookies are so buttery and delicious. This post contains affiliate links. You might also like our pumpkin-shaped shortbread cookies, our frosted fudge shortbread cookies, or our English toffee recipe!

Watch our step by step video!

Butter Cookies

It simply isn't the holidays without butter cookies. They are delicious on their own, but fun to customize too! Add different extracts, dip in chocolate, or add sprinkles. The options are endless. If you like spritz cookies you'll love these. If you like shortbread cookies you'll love these. And if you love the rosette-shaped Danish cookies (that come in a tin) you'll love these. The rosette ones are my favorite ones from the tin. I'm not sure why, but they seem more buttery than the other shapes.

Danish Butter Cookies Are

• Buttery
• Crisp
• Flavored with almond and vanilla extract
• A no-chill recipe

Danish Butter Cookies Ingredients

Butter: 2 sticks of salted butter. You can use unsalted, but I always use salted butter in my baking recipes. Make sure that your butter is at room temperature. You don't want chilled butter for this recipe. If the dough is cold it will be harder to pipe the cookies. Powdered sugar: yes, powdered sugar, not granulated. Vanilla extract Almond extract: if you don't like almond extract you can omit it and double the vanilla extract. All-purpose flour Milk: I don't use milk in my shortbread cookies because they are rolled out and cut with cookie cutters, but because these cookies are piped, you'll need a couple of tablespoons to soften the dough.

How to Make Butter Cookies

Best Frosting Tips for Butter Cookies

We're not piping frosting, we're piping cookie dough so the frosting tip that you use matters. Here are a few options:

• Ateco 826: This is a large open star. Ideal for piping the cookie rosettes.
• Ateco 849: Large closed star. Gives a slightly different appearance, but is still large enough to pipe rosette cookie shapes.
• Wilton 2D: This tip will work in a pinch. Grab a set of small pliers and bend the prongs straight. This will open it up to be an open-star tip. I tried a 1M (which seems to be the same size as a 2D) and it was ridiculously hard to pipe through. For whatever reason, an opened-up 2D tip was easier to use.
• Wilton 8B: large open star. I used this tip for making my pumpkin shortbread cookies. The prongs are shorter so it won't give the same rosette appearance, but it's easy to pipe cookies using this tip in a different pattern.

Note: If you don't want to deal with tips and pastry bags you can slice and bake these cookies or use a cookie press. 

How to pipe butter cookies

Fit a sturdy pastry bag (if using a disposable bag you can double it up) with a frosting tip. Add a few spoonfuls of cookie dough. I prefer to fill the bag only about halfway. It takes less pressure to pipe the cookies vs. a loaded bag of cookie dough. Refill the bag as needed. Apply firm pressure and pipe rosettes 2" apart on an ungreased baking sheet or Silpat lined baking sheet. It might take a couple of tries to get the right pressure/feel for piping the cookies. If you mess up, just scoop the dough up and put it back into the pastry bag. The cookies will flatten slightly when baked, as all cookies do. You can chill the cookies before baking for 30 minutes if you'd like to prevent some of the spreading. I've never done this. I like the look of the slightly flattened swirls. Bake cookies at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until the edges are lightly golden.

This recipe makes 22-24 (2") cookies. The cookies will crisp as they cool. You can enjoy them warm or cold---I prefer them cold because the flavors really shine through! They will stay crisp for a couple of days then soften slightly. Store in an airtight container up to 1 week.

Danish Butter Cookies Recipe