4 Cookies Pennsylvania Christmas Trays Have That Out-of-Staters Haven’t Tried

Pizzelles get their licorice taste from anise, and they show up on a lot of Pennsylvania cookie trays.

If you’re from out of state, you might not have tried one, and it’s not the only cookie on the tray you’ll be guessing about.

Here are the cookies Pennsylvania Christmas trays have that many out-of-staters haven’t tried.

1. Sand Tarts

Sand tarts are ultra-thin cookies popular in Pennsylvania Dutch communities, and some recipes skip leaveners like baking powder to keep them paper-thin.

A recipe from WPSU, Penn State’s public media station, has you roll the dough thin and cut it into small squares.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on a 2009 Philadelphia talk on Christmas in Pennsylvania where the cookies included crisp snowflake sand tarts, some still standard today.

If you pick up a sand tart, how thin it is may surprise you.

2. Moravian Star Cookies

Moravian sugar cookies are buttery, wafer-thin and super crispy, according to Historic Bethlehem’s holiday sweets blog post.

The same post says Richard Groman uses a recipe that dates back to the 1920s.

If you visit Bethlehem, you’re in a city that Philadelphia public media station WHYY describes as founded by Moravians on Christmas Eve.

A Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook recipe for Moravian Christmas cookies that WPSU posted calls for molasses and boiled icing on the cooled cookies.

3. Kolacky

Kolacky are Eastern European cookies made with a cream cheese dough folded around fruit preserves such as apricot or strawberry.

Gantnews calls them a staple at Czech and Polish holiday celebrations across the state, so if you know a Czech or Polish family there, you may have tasted them.

Some out-of-staters haven’t heard the name, let alone tasted kolacky.

4. Pizzelles

Pizzelles are traditional Italian cookies flavored with anise, which tastes like licorice.

Because Pennsylvania has a strong Italian heritage, pizzelles are often found at holiday parties, so you may spot them at yours.

A 2021 Takeout essay on Western Pennsylvania cookie tables listed pizzelles in its Christmas section, beside gingerbread men, fudge bars and pinwheels.

The patterns look complicated, but pizzelles are easy to make as long as you have an iron, so you could try them at home.

Springerle

Springerle are cookies stamped with intricate relief images, from flowers to animals to everyday scenes.

German immigrants brought the tradition to Philadelphia beginning in the 18th century, according to WHYY.

Anise traditionally gives springerle a slight black licorice taste, so if you don't like licorice, they may not be for you.

A 2011 NPR story on medieval Christmas cookies visited a Strasburg baker in Lancaster County, one of a handful of commercial bakers in the country making springerle.

Lebkuchen and Pfeffernüsse

Christmas cookies like lebkuchen, a German gingerbread, belong to the honey-based versions that developed in medieval Europe.

A Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas cookie collection that WPSU posted includes recipes for both lebkuchen and pfeffernüsse.

If you compare the two recipes, you'll see lebkuchen get a thin white or lemon icing while pfeffernüsse, cut into marble-sized pieces, skip it.

If you're used to iced cookies, pfeffernüsse look bare next to lebkuchen.

Pittsburgh Thumbprints

Thumbprint cookies aren't exclusive to Pennsylvania, but Gantnews says they're key to holiday celebrations across much of the state.

In Pittsburgh, they're typically cake-like, with frosting and sprinkles in the center.

In Pennsylvania Dutch Country, they more often have jam-filled centers.

If you grew up on the jam kind, a Pittsburgh tray can surprise you.

Kiffles

Kiffles drew a December 2025 report from Lehigh Valley station WFMZ, which said a Northampton County bakery was making 15,000 of them a day during the holiday season.

The bakery's kiffles are an Eastern European pastry with a cream cheese and butter dough and a fruit or nut filling.

Lehigh Valley Style calls the kiffle a variation on a cookie that's traditionally enjoyed around Christmastime, so you can count it as holiday baking.

Pennsylvania Dutch Cookie Cutters

Pennsylvania Dutch families baked hundreds of cookies for the holidays in shapes like tulips, hearts, stars and parrots.

If you wonder where those shapes came from, local tinsmiths made the cutters by hand.

More than 30 of them worked in Monroe County between 1810 and 1940.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on the 2009 talk that families brought out their cutters in early December and baked by the washbasket-full.

Cookies like apee cake, baked on a bed of anise seed, were standard fare in the early 1800s.