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Readers name their favorite cookies to bake over the holidays
We can smell the gingerbread already.
Is it even Christmas if there isn’t a tin of cookies on the table?
Along with caroling, tree decorating, and consuming copious amounts of egg nog, baking holiday cookies is a quintessential Christmas pastime for many families.
We recently asked our readers to name their favorite holiday cookie, choosing from a list of traditional options — gingerbread, Linzer cookies, snickerdoodles, and more — or calling out their own favorite baked goods. The verdict? The majority of readers named their own go-to cookie, with gingerbread following closely behind in second place.
What's your favorite holiday cookie?
Sugar cookies (with or without icing)
10%
Linzer cookies
11%
Gingerbread cookies
16%
Chocolate crinkle cookies
8%
Peanut butter blossoms
10%
Thumbprint cookies
5%
Snickerdoodles
6%
Shortbread
6%
Snowball cookies
6%
Other
21%
One of the most popular “other” write-ins was the spritz cookie, a treat that closely resembles a sugar cookie — except for the fact that it’s shaped with a cookie press, as opposed to a cookie cutter. Also compared to shortbread, spritzes typically use a whole egg, which make them less crumbly than shortbread cookies. Readers shared their preferences for sour cream spritzes, anise-flavored spritzes, and spritzes made from recipes that have been passed down through generations.
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“My father would pump out long chains of dough from the cookie press, cut them into shorter strips, and then fold them into candy cane and wreath shapes that he would dot with red and green icing,” wrote Sharon from Medford. “We would, of course, help, and now my siblings and my children love to help their Pops make the annual Christmas cookies.”
Additional favorites in the “other” category included Italian anise cookies, Danish butter cookies, pecan crescents, pizzelles, Russian tea cakes, and white chip, macadamia, and coconut cookies.
Gingerbread cookies garnered 17 percent of the votes, while Linzer cookies, peanut butter blossoms, and sugar cookies followed closely behind.
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Readers also shared some of their favorite holiday baking traditions, from baking dozens of cookies for coworkers to pairing cookie making with holiday movies.
“My friends and I get together and bake a bunch of cookies, all of us bringing a dough or the ingredients for a cookie or treat, and we watch ‘Love Actually’ and eat takeout,” wrote Alice from Dracut. “We’ve been doing it for almost ten years. Last year we couldn’t get together, so I did a huge baking weekend with my husband and then we drove around and dropped off cookie boxes. This year we’ve invited our friend over to join in again.”
Peg from Billerica shared that she makes cookies every year for her neighbors, while another reader wrote that they “must make my mother’s traditional recipes and mail out the results to friends and family.”
Jeniffer from Wrentham wrote that her “four kids bake holiday treats every year for teachers, friends, and family. My mother taught me when I was six years old with her famous cookie press creations. Now, 40+ years [later], we carry on that tradition and include our newest friends and family members to join us. … Family is everything, especially at Christmas when we take extra time to be thankful we can be together at home.”
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“Every year, I gather my kids, god kids, niece, great niece, basically all interested folks to a lively, messy cookie bake,” wrote Leslie from Quincy. “Sugar with ALL the icing and trims is mandatory, as well as gingerbread. This year, we added a third: stained-glass cookies!”
The real MVP? Erika from Allston, who made “Cookie Day” a highly-anticipated event at her former office.
“Every year I pick out five cookie recipes, some new and some that I’ve made many times over, and I go on a baking blitz, making hundreds of cookies and peppermint bark to share with coworkers, friends, and family,” Erika wrote. “Coworkers at my last job started to call it ‘Cookie Day,’ and marked their calendars to make sure they came into the office that day. When I’m mixing dough and doing the baking, my husband likes to play DJ and makes sure there’s always good tunes playing to keep me going. Sometimes he even helps prep the ingredients or decorate. It’s a lot of work, but I love the fun and tradition of making Christmas cookies and sharing them with others.”
Uh, Erika, can you make cookies for our office?
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