Learn how to make melt-in-your-mouth Italian Christmas crescent cookies! Made with simple ingredients like butter, flour, and vanilla, and dusted with sweet powdered sugar. The perfect holiday cookie that everyone will love!

A stack of white Christmas crescent cookies on a plate with powder sugar being dusted over top.

Make the holidays complete with these delicious Italian crescent cookies! They’re simple butter cookies shaped into a crescent moon. To make them you’ll only need 5 ingredients plus powdered sugar for dusting over top.

These cookies are famous in our house! My mom makes them for everyone around the holidays and let me tell you, it’s a recipe everyone loves. The texture is light and crisp, but they melt in your mouth.

We love serving these after our Christmas dinner, but they’re perfect for gifting too!

Ingredients – What You Need

Below you’ll find the full list of ingredients you’ll need to make this recipe.

Flour: for this recipe, I used all-purpose baking flour.
Butter: cold butter for crisp texture! If you prefer dairy-free you can use vegan butter instead.
Vanilla extract: to add flavor!
Cinnamon: for some warm spice flavors!
Sugar: just a touch of white sugar is used in the cookie batter.
Powdered sugar: for sweetness! This will be dusted over the top of the finished cookies at the end.

How to Make Christmas Crescent Cookies

This recipe can be made in either a bowl with a hand mixer or a food processor!

(1) Add the ingredients to a food processor or bowl! Add the flour, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and cubed butter into your food processor or bowl.

(2) Blend until dough forms – Then pulse the food processor or mix the hand-mixer on high until the ingredients form a dough.

Step one - ingredients for crescent cookies in a food processor that's sitting on a wooden board.

Step two - cookie dough for crescent cookies chopped in a food processor that's sitting on a wooden background.

(3) Make small dough logs – then separate the dough into 2 dough “logs” and then slice into 1-inch thick pieces for the cookies.

(4) Form the cookie – Then the palm of your hands to roll the dough pieces into 3-inch pieces.

(5) Make the crescent – Then use your fingers to slightly bend the dough into a crescent shape. Lay cookies on a sheet lined with parchment paper and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Step three - A log of crescent cookie dough cut into small pieces that is sitting on a crinkled piece of parchment paper.

Step four- two hands rolling a crescent cookie into it's shape over a brown wooden background.

Bake! Then bake the cookies at 350F for 9 minutes, then flip the pan and bake an additional 9 minutes. Let the cookies completely cool before dusting with powdered sugar.

Tips for Success

Work quickly and don’t handle the dough too much – to keep the butter from getting too warm, I recommend working as quickly as possible with your hands. If you work too much with the dough it will start to crack and become too soft. If the cookies get too soft, they will melt in the oven – which we don’t want.

Don’t skip chilling the cookies! – This is a must for these cookies. The butter that’s in the cookie dough needs to stay cold for the cookie to hold its shape and not melt. So, don’t skip chilling the cookies before baking!

Chill the dough if it gets too difficult to work with – if you find that the cookies keep cracking while trying to form them or you feel like the dough is too warm to work with, chill the dough in the fridge for 5-8 minutes, then try again.

Make prep easy and use a food processor – This recipe can be made in either a bowl with a hand mixer or, as my mom loves to do it, in a food processor. Just add the ingredients and blend until the dough forms! Super easy and quick.

Make it gluten-free! To make this recipe gluten-free friendly, I recommend using a 1 to 1 gluten-free flour blend instead of all-purpose flour.

Tips for Storing & Freezing

Keep leftover cookies fresh – the best way to store these cookies is an airtight container or ziplock bag. These cookies should stay fresh for a week!

Freeze the dough – the cookies aren’t the best for freezing as a whole, but you can freeze the dough by wrapping it in plastic wrap and placing it in a freezer-friendly bag for up to 2 months.

More Christmas Cookies to Try

Cherry Chocolate Dipped Biscotti
Oatmeal Molasses Cookies
Brownie Oat Flour Cookies