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Diana Chistruga
Cookies can bring so much joy with just one bite, and we've gathered more than three dozen enticing cookie recipes for all kinds of occasions. Feeling celebratory? You can't go wrong with funfetti cookies. Something simple to enjoy with afternoon tea? Try brown-butter sablés. From classic chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, and thumbprints, to holiday-worthy spitzbuben and gingerbread, here are our best cookie recipes to bake.
Cardamom Shortbread Cookies with Dulce de Leche Peda Filling
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Adorned with edible flower petals and gold leaf, these spiced sandwich cookies, which blogger and cookbook author Hetal Vasavada makes for her Diwali celebration, are an occasion unto themselves. Store-bought dulce de leche enriches a filling inspired by peda, a creamy Indian milk fudge flavored with cardamom.
Brown-Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
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Most traditional chocolate chip cookie recipes start by creaming softened butter with sugar. Here, the butter is first melted in a skillet until golden brown and nutty. This simple step does require a bit of extra time (mainly for chilling the butter), but the result is an intensely toasty butterscotch note that makes these thin, chewy cookies irresistible.
Double-Chocolate Rye Cookies
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A mix of unsweetened cocoa and bittersweet chocolate bars gives these fudgy cookies a deep chocolate flavor. Dark rye flour adds a lightly savory note that balances the sweet intensity of dark chocolate well and plays off the crunchy sea salt garnish. The addition of light brown sugar makes these cookies extra chewy and helps to extend their shelf life.
Pumpkin Spice Snickerdoodles
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The secret to nailing these classic cookies is to bake them just until they're set but not browned. They'll finish cooking as they cool on the baking sheet, delivering a tender-chewy texture.
Lemony Butter Cookies
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Diana Chistruga
Using powdered sugar in the dough in place of granulated sugar gives these lemony cookies a light, delicious crumb.
Brown Butter-Cardamom Spitzbuben
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German for "cheeky boys," these Bavarian cookies will be the star of your holiday cookie platter. Brown butter and cardamom make this simple cookie into a fragrant treat. Take the time to freshly grind the cardamom — the robust, citrusy flavor is worth it.
Vanilla–Brown Butter Sablé Cookies
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Pastry chef Natasha Pickowicz loves simple vanilla cookies like these. Vanilla, a notoriously difficult product to grow and source, really shines in this recipe, so be sure to use the best quality you can find.
Toffee-Apricot Oat Cookies
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These lacy cookies are studded with tart dried apricot, salty-sweet chunks of toffee, and sweet milk chocolate for the perfect combination of flavors and textures. Be sure to rotate the pans during baking to ensure evenly baked, perfectly crisp-chewy cookies.
Triple Chocolate-Peppermint Cookies
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The peppermint bark in this recipe is simple to make and adds a beautiful pop of color and flavor to each cookie, though store-bought bark will work well here, too.
Giant Chocolate Cookie with Cacao Nibs and Flaky Salt
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To make this oversized cookie even more festive, bring it to the table topped with scoops of your favorite ice cream so that everyone can share.
Tortellini Dolci al Forno (Emilian Fruit-Stuffed Christmas Cookies)
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Not to be confused with the pasta of the same name, these classic Emilian Christmas cookies are made from a tender, flaky dough filled with a sweet-tart trio of fruit: cherry preserves, rich saba (cooked-down grape must), and candied citron.
Thumbprint Cookies with White Chocolate-Espresso Ganache
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Baking legend Claudia Fleming based these melt-in-your mouth cookies on a recipe her mother used to make. They owe their texture to the perfect amount of cornstarch, which makes them exquisitely crumbly without being too dry. The buttercream-like filling is light in texture but stable thanks to the white chocolate.
Chocolate Pretzel Crinkle Cookies
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By substituting flour with Glutino pretzels, this version of chocolate crinkle cookies is not only gluten-free, but also perfectly salty-sweet with the best-ever chewy center.
Cardamom–Poppy Seed Cookies
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A generous ratio of butter to flour helps the dough spread in the oven, resulting in thin, crispy cookies with lacy golden brown edges. Chill the dough before baking to control spreading and concentrate the flavor of the cookies.
Shortbread Cookies
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Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling by Debbie Wee
These crumbly, buttery cookies are a perfect treat with afternoon tea, or with ice cream, fruit, or chocolate for dessert.
Thai Tea Crinkle Cookies
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Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling Ali Domrongchai
These cookies have perfect chew and get their delicately spiced, sweet flavor from instant Thai tea powder.
Crunchy Peanut Butter Cookies
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Peanut butter binds these supernutty flourless cookies from Southern cook Elizabeth Woodson, a former art director at F&W. The crowd-pleasing recipe takes less than 30 minutes.
S'mores Linzer Cookies
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Linzer cookies are descendants of the linzertorte, named after the Austrian city of Linz. Swapping graham flour and hazelnut meal for the all-purpose flour and almond meal gives these linzer-inspired cookies the flavor of s'mores.
Salted Tahini-Chocolate Shortbread
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These buttery, nutty, salty shortbread cookies have enough structure to hold together when you pick them up, but when you take a bite, they're meltingly tender. The salt complements the tanginess of the chocolate and brings out the nuttiness from the tahini. Marbling the dough creates a striking pattern.
Lemon-Tahini Cookies
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The dough for these cookies can be made and frozen up to three weeks in advance — just let it thaw for 30 minutes first before rolling it in the sesame seeds.
Gluten-Free Cacao Nib Meringues
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Made with chocolate, cacao nibs, and cocoa, these intensely flavored meringues have a delicate, crisp exterior with a soft, chewy, marshmallow-like interior.
Triple Ginger Rye Cookies
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Hearty rye flour paired with three types of ginger — powdered, candied, and fresh — lends an earthy, lightly spicy flavor to these holiday cookies. The best part? You can store them in the freezer for up to three months, so you'll always have a snack at the ready.
Salty Smoked Pistachio and Honey Shortbread Cookies
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"Finishing the cookies with a lemony honey and a pinch of flaky salt creates a subtly savory edge that's delicious with steaming mugs of tea, a nip of single-malt Scotch, or vanilla bean ice cream," cookbook author Paula Disbrowe writes.
Lemon-Buckwheat Shortbread
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Lemon filling highlights the nuttiness of buckwheat flour in these shortbread cookie sandwiches from 2017 F&W Best New Chef Nina Compton.
Funfetti Cookies
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Chewy and absolutely jam-packed with rainbow sprinkles, these funfetti cookies will add a festive touch to almost any occasion. Place a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream between two of them to make a colorful ice cream sandwich.
Negroni Cookies
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Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Margaret Monroe Dickey / Prop Styling by Thom Driver
These chewy cookies lean on orange zest–infused sugar and Campari icing to pay homage to the namesake cocktail.
Matcha Tea Cake Cookies
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These delicate cookies are made with oil, so they're moist and tender. Matcha gives them a light, toasty flavor and turns them a pretty green.
Cardamom Thumbprints
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Adding cardamom to these crispy cookies gives them a subtle spiced flavor. If you don't have any of the jams listed, you can fill the thumbprints with other jams or with chocolate.
Spiced Gingerbread Cookies
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Baker Julianne Jones' wonderfully zingy gingerbread cookies have a tender and cakey texture, yet they're sturdy enough to decorate. As an alternative to the icing, you can sprinkle the tops of the cookies with demerara sugar before baking for a nice crunch.
Fudgy Chocolate-Walnut Cookies
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New York pastry chef François Payard's divinely gooey chocolate cookies are flourless, which makes them ideal for Passover baking.
Sugar-Crusted Chocolate Cookies
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This is chef Jacques Torres's recipe for sablés, a classic French butter cookie with a sandy, crumbly texture (sablé means "sandy") — though this fabulously dense version is actually more like shortbread.
Butterscotch Chocolate Sandwich Cookies
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Be the star of a cookie swap with these gorgeous sandwich cookies, filled with homemade butterscotch.
Pecan Sandies
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These cookies are unbelievably light, delicate, and crisp. The secret is to let the cookie dough chill overnight before slicing and baking.
Melody Cookies
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Inspired by the cookies of her childhood, legendary cookbook author Dorie Greenspan developed these crisp, chocolaty shortbreads. They are lovely eaten as-is but also make for great sandwich cookies. The possibilities are endless: fill with speculoos spread, chocolate ganache, salted caramel, marshmallow fluff, or simple buttercream frosting.
Candy Cookies
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These truffle-like cookies have an unexpected piece of candy in the centers. They're adapted from a traditional holiday cookie that cookbook author Renato Poliafito discovered during his travels in Germany.
Nutty Chocolate Chip Cookies
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Should a chocolate chip cookie be chewy or crispy? This recipe, with its crisp crinkly top and chewy center, is both. We also give guidelines for anyone who demands a perfectly chewy or completely crisp version.
Green Tea Fortune Cookies
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Chef Joanne Chang likes having fun with the fortunes she puts inside these large cookies. Shaping the tuiles while they're hot can be tricky, so consider using cotton gloves.
Chocolate Chip Cookie in a Mug
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In less than 10 minutes, you go from raw ingredients to a warm, soft chocolate chip cookie thanks to this quick, customizable recipe. Serve the cookie with a sprinkle of flaky sea salt and a scoop of your favorite ice cream.
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