Cookies - A Love Story

By Hklbrries

We love the five winners of Parade's Christmas Cookie Contest. Keep reading for all the great recipes, plus the sweet tales behind them. Proust had his madeleine. We have snickerdoodles, rum balls, nut rolls, and sugar cookies to transport us to our youth, back to those toasty kitchens where we gathered every December with our moms and grandmas to bake cookies, the smells of butter and cinnamon perfuming the air.

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Before there were prepaid gift cards, homemade cookies were what we gave to neighbors and church friends and teachers for the holidays—and, of course, to Santa, along with a glass of milk and a hand-scrawled note. It’s those sorts of treats we had in mind when we asked readers to submit their favorite recipes for Parade's 2012 Holiday Cookie Bake-Off.

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Nearly 200 submissions came in from all over America, and deciding on the best of the bunch proved a challenge. But our panel of cookie-loving editors, using not only taste but ease of preparation and creativity as criteria, narrowed them down to the very best in five categories. The lucky winners each received a KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer, with the highest-scoring recipe earning its entrant a KitchenAid Dual Fuel Double Oven Range.

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We hope that you’ll try at least one or two of our picks and that you’ll enjoy every bite as much as we did. Like the holidays themselves, these morsels are sweet, filled with goodness, and sure to be gone before you know it.

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Recipes in collection associated with this article: Chocolate Cherry Cordials, Chocolate Chip Halfway Cookies, Maple Pecan Refrigerator Cookies, Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies and Linzer Tart Cookies.

Ingredients

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Details

Adapted from timesonline.com

Preparation

Step 1

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