Contents
One page per cookie, thirty-six of them, each with weights, oven temperature, yield and the one or two things that decide whether it works. The theory lives next door on cookies — spread, sugar ratios, what a rest buys, and the worked recipes for the generic types. This folder is the named cookies: the ones with a country, a holiday or a bakery counter attached.
How to choose one
Almost every question that starts "what should I bake" is really one of four questions.
| The constraint | Go to |
|---|---|
| I have an hour | jam drops · anzac biscuits · chocolate crinkle cookies (if the dough is already chilled) · oatmeal lace cookies |
| It has to travel | anzac biscuits · pfeffernusse · koulourakia · digestive biscuits · nankhatai |
| It has to look like something | spritz cookies · speculoos · pizzelle · kolaczki · maamoul |
| No wheat in the house | amaretti · monster cookies · the flourless peanut butter cookie on cookies |
By what holds the dough together
The useful way to sort cookies is by what is doing the structural work, because that is what you have to respect when you substitute.
Butter alone
Short doughs with no egg or almost none. They break rather than bend, they keep for weeks, and they are unforgiving about warmth.
russian tea cakes · kourabiedes · nankhatai · spritz cookies · thumbprint cookies · jam drops · chinese almond cookies
Egg and sugar
Foam-based and flour-light. The lift is mechanical, whipped in before baking.
amaretti · tuiles · fortune cookies · pizzelle · benne wafers · oatmeal lace cookies
Chemically leavened drop doughs
Soda or powder, brown sugar, a soft chewy result. The American default.
monster cookies · cowboy cookies · brown butter toffee cookies · chocolate tahini cookies · chocolate crinkle cookies · oatmeal cream pies · anzac biscuits
Cake batters that arrived as cookies
Soft, domed, and iced or filled. Structurally these belong with cakes.
Pastry doughs cut small
Cream cheese, sour cream or laminated dough, filled and folded.
rugelach · kolaczki · hamantaschen · palmiers
Syrup and semolina
The Mediterranean and South Asian traditions, where the fat is ghee or oil and the sweetness often arrives after baking.
melomakarona · maamoul · nankhatai · koulourakia · pfeffernusse
Assembled rather than baked
By occasion
| Occasion | Cookies |
|---|---|
| Christmas, northern Europe | speculoos · pfeffernusse · spritz cookies · russian tea cakes |
| Christmas, Greece | kourabiedes and melomakarona, made as a pair |
| Easter | koulourakia · maamoul |
| Purim | hamantaschen |
| Eid | maamoul |
| Lunar New Year | chinese almond cookies |
| Diwali and festival tins | nankhatai |
| Bake sale | jam drops · monster cookies · cowboy cookies · nanaimo bars |
| Cocktail hour | benne wafers · palmiers · tuiles |
Equipment that changes what you can make
Most of this folder needs a bowl, a sheet pan and an oven. Five recipes do not.
| Recipe | Needs |
|---|---|
| pizzelle · stroopwafels | A patterned iron. No oven substitute exists |
| spritz cookies | A cookie press, or a large open star tip |
| maamoul | A carved tabi mould, or a fork and patience |
| speculoos | A carved board, for the traditional shape only |
| fortune cookies | A muffin tin to cool the folds in |
More on all of it at baking equipment and ovens and heat.
What keeps, and for how long
Shelf life in a cookie is a water-activity question, not a freshness one. Dry, high-sugar cookies keep for weeks; anything with a soft filling or fresh dairy does not. This matters commercially — see cottage food baking.
| Holds a month | Holds a week | Eat within two days |
|---|---|---|
| pfeffernusse · koulourakia · chinese almond cookies · maamoul · nankhatai · anzac biscuits · speculoos · digestive biscuits | russian tea cakes · kourabiedes · amaretti · jam drops · rugelach · kolaczki · stroopwafels | palmiers · tuiles · oatmeal lace cookies · benne wafers · black and white cookies · whoopie pies |
The middle column is where most bake-sale planning goes wrong. Bake the left column a week out and the right column that morning.
Every recipe
- alfajores — cornstarch shortbread, dulce de leche, coconut rim
- amaretti — almond, sugar, egg white; no flour at all
- anzac biscuits — oats, coconut, golden syrup, no egg
- benne wafers — Lowcountry sesame lace, and a West African seed
- black and white cookies — a cake batter iced on its flat side
- brown butter toffee cookies — what browning butter actually does
- chinese almond cookies — lard, almond extract, and the crack
- chocolate crinkle cookies — two sugar coats, and why one fails
- chocolate tahini cookies — sesame paste as fat and flour at once
- cowboy cookies — the add-in ceiling, tested
- digestive biscuits — coarse wholemeal, oats, and the chocolate underside
- fortune cookies — Kyoto by way of California, folded in ten seconds
- hamantaschen — three corners that stay shut
- jam drops — the biscuit-tin default, and melting moments
- kolaczki — an unsweetened cream cheese dough
- koulourakia — Greek Easter twists, kneaded like bread
- kourabiedes — clarified butter whipped white, buried in sugar
- maamoul — semolina soaked overnight, pressed in a mould
- melomakarona — baked dry, then drowned in honey syrup
- monster cookies — flourless, and built for a crowd
- nanaimo bars — three layers, no oven
- nankhatai — ghee, semolina, cardamom, eggless by origin
- oatmeal cream pies — molasses for softness that lasts
- oatmeal lace cookies — 3 : 1 sugar to flour, and what happens
- palmiers — rolled in sugar instead of flour
- peanut butter blossoms — the sixty-second window
- pfeffernusse — a three-week cure in a tin with an apple slice
- pizzelle — the oldest cookie still made the same way
- russian tea cakes — nut flour as the tenderiser, sugar twice
- rugelach — cream cheese dough, rolled into crescents
- speculoos — an overnight rest and 3 mm
- spritz cookies — the one dough that must not be chilled
- stroopwafels — split hot, filled with caramel
- thumbprint cookies — press twice, once in the oven
- tuiles — fifteen seconds to shape
- whoopie pies — buttermilk domes and a marshmallow filling
Already elsewhere in the vault: chocolate chip cookies (the rested formula) and spiced rye ginger cookies.
Elsewhere on the site
Theory: cookies · sugar in baking · baking fats · flour · gluten · yeast and leavening · ovens and heat · baking equipment
Sibling folders: Cake recipes · Pie and tart recipes · Cold meals · Recipes by ingredient · Recipes by method
Selling them: cottage food baking · Baked goods · bakeries
Part of the Leisure wiki. Folders here are generated from tags — to move a page, change its tags rather than dragging the file.