Cookie Essentials

Never-fail recipes for all the essentials of your holiday cookie platter, plus the science that explains the best baking methods.

Cracked Chewy Sugar Cookies

These old fashioned sugar cookies bake up soft and chewy, but lightly crisp around the edges. A hearty dose of kosher salt keeps the sweetness in check while maximizing their buttery richness.

Gingersnaps

With two types of ginger, these cookies are complex and spicy, but mellowed by earthy molasses and graham-y whole wheat flour.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Our oatmeal cookies are thick and chewy, but crisp around the edges. A hint of cinnamon gives them a cozy, old-fashioned vibe.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chewy chocolate chip cookies with crisp edges, a rich, buttery, toffee-like flavor, big chocolate chunks, and a sprinkle of sea salt.

Soft and Crunchy Peanut Butter Cookies

A combination of whole peanuts and crunchy peanut butter gives these cookies a rich, concentrated flavor and varied texture.

Spritz Cookies

Spritz cookies are crisp and buttery, subtly flavored with vanilla and salt. With a little practice, they're also some of the prettiest holiday cookies on the block.

Snowball Cookies

Dipping these cookies in confectioner's sugar while still hot allows their residual heat to melt the sugar and form a glaze around the cookie, no extra work required!

Lebkuchen

These cakey German Christmas classics are rich with spice and dried fruit. Cocoa powder deepens the flavor and they're finished off with a sweet, crackly glaze.

Coconut Macaroons

Chewy on the inside, crunchy on the outside, coconutty all the way through, these little gems are nothing like the oh-la-la pink, purple, or green macarons that replaced the cupcake for Hot Bakery Trend of 2008.

Linzer Cookies

In this traditional Austrian treat, hazelnut cookies are sandwiched around raspberry jam and dusted with confectioners' sugar.

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

Roll a normal-seeming dough in a heavy coat of powdered sugar, pop them in the oven, and presto: beautiful, snowy, fudgy cookies with a cracked, mosaic facade.

Brown Sugar Cookies

The molasses in brown sugar gives these cookies a smooth, mellow caramel flavor and makes them more soft and chewy than the standard.

Why Cream Butter and Sugar?

Does your cookie recipe call for creaming the butter by beating it with sugar? Just how important is that step, and how do you know if you're doing it right? The science of creaming and exactly how to do it.

How Baking Soda Works

Most people understand sodium bicarbonate only in terms of elementary school experiments—something about baking soda plus vinegar making things go boom. With cookies, though, it's a little different. Dig into the science of baking soda, and how to adjust amounts to get precisely the results you want.

How Do Eggs Affect My Cookies?

Understand the exact role of eggs in a cookie, and learn how altering the ratio of yolks and whites and the way you incorporate them affects your baking.

The Real Differences Between Brown and White Sugars

Sugar. It's an integral ingredient in just about every cookie recipe, but don't make the mistake of thinking its job is simply to make them sweet. Oh no—sugar does way more than that, and understanding its real power is the key to becoming a true cookie master.

How Does Baking Powder Affect My Cookies?

Baking powder make cakes and pancakes lighter and can have a serious effect on the texture of your baked goods. Here's everything you need to know about the deep relationship between baking powder and cookies.

Holiday Guide