With Christmas coming up in the next few weeks, you may be feeling more festive lately. When you add a pandemic that is occurring as well, then you may especially feel like celebrating Christmas as early as possible. And what better way to celebrate the holidays then to start baking festive dessert items?

Baking is a perfect way to relieve stress caused by holiday shopping and the pandemic. Plus, it's a perfect way to celebrate without needing to host any parties that would cause a risk of being exposed to someone infected with COVID. You may be wondering, what are the best recipes to use for creating festive dessert items? Well there are tons of different recipes that you can choose from! Here are eight holiday recipes that will certainly put you in a festive mood.

1. Christmas fudge

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Yes, there is such a thing as Christmas fudge! This recipe from Delish uses chocolate chips, condensed milk, and Christmas sprinkles. It takes ten minutes to prep and two hours to make. But it will definitely be worth it once you take the first bite of the fudge after cooking it!

2. Peanut butter snowballs

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Another popular holiday dessert is peanut butter snowballs. They're graham cracker, white chocolate, and peanut butter mixed into cake balls that will have you wanting a second helping! This recipe from Delish is easy since it takes only thirty-five minutes to make.

3. Gingerbread cookies

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Gingerbread cookies are an all-time favorite during the holiday season! If you love gingerbread cookies, you'll love this recipe from the Food Network! It's marked as an easy-to-make recipe and though it may take three hours to bake, it's definitely worth the effort once you have a bite! Plus, there are so many ways that you can make gingerbread cookies that you can never get bored with only trying to make them one way! You could even create a house using the same recipe once you created the cookies.

4. Peppermint bark

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One of my personal favorite holiday treats is peppermint bark. Every year, I always have at least one during the month of December. This recipe from Delish is simple and easy to make! Peppermint bark uses white chocolate and peppermint mixed together. It's also easy to make since it takes only fifty minutes to cook. It's perfect for anyone who loves peppermint as much as I do!

5. Santa Trash Cookies

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Even though the name of this recipe may sound unusual, these cookies are to die for if you love anything that combines salty and sweet! These cookies have peanut butter, chocolate chips, and sprinkles which makes them the perfect dessert item! The recipe from Delish is easy to use and requires only an hour of time to cook.

6. Christmas pinwheel cookies

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If you want to try making something different for cookies, you should try this recipe from Delish! They're sugar cookies with sprinkles and they look exactly like their name applies: like a pinwheel. They use only a couple of ingredients and you are given six easy steps to follow in order to create them. So, if you're looking for the perfect cookie to bake during the holidays that will impress all of your family and friends, you should definitely try making a batch of these for the holidays!

7. Peanut butter blossoms

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Another popular Christmas dessert is peanut butter blossoms, which are peanut butter cookies with Hershey kisses on top! And if you're like me and love Hershey kisses, these will likely be your favorite dessert item for the holidays! Try this recipe from allrecipes; you won't want to share them with anyone else!

8. S'mores cookie

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Who says that you can't eat a s'mores related dessert for Christmas? Anyone who loves s'mores will tell you that these cookies are one of their favorites! This recipe is easy to make and requires only twelve minutes to cook. If you love s'mores, you should definitely try this cookie recipe for the holiday season!

9. Christmas lights cupcake

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If you're more of a cupcake lover than a fan of cookies, then you should try this recipe from Delish. This recipe explains how to make cupcakes with vanilla icing and decked out with holiday edible lights. The best part is that the lights are really colorful M&Ms! So if you love M&Ms and you want something different to make during the holiday season, you should try making this recipe for either yourself or your family members.

10. Bread pudding

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Finally, if you're wanting a traditional holiday dessert item, you should try making bread pudding! This recipe from Delish uses only a couple of ingredients and takes only an hour and forty minutes to cook. It also only takes three easy steps to make. Bread pudding is a traditional holiday recipe and will definitely put you in a festive mood!

If you're looking for easy recipes to make for the holiday season, you should try any one of these recipes. Baking can be a lot of fun, and it's a traditional activity to participate in it during the holidays. Plus, with the pandemic and unnecessary stress caused by the year, baking is a perfect way to not only relieve stress, but also to treat yourself for surviving 2020!