Everything You Need to Know About Cookies

In the wide world of desserts,cookiesare perhaps the friendliest and most versatile treat. They can be as simple as shortbread, an elemental combination of flour, sugar, and butter, or as time-intensive and beautiful as theseBrown-Butter-Cardamom Spitzbuben, each one featuring a jewel-like cutout of jam. They can be studded withchocolate chipsor used tosandwich lemon curd,dulce de leche, orminty white chocolate. You canroll them outand cut them out or just dollop them onto a sheet pan. Perhaps your childhood included a cookie of particular significance to you. Maybe, likeFood & Wineassociate features editor Nina Friend, your family cookie recipe is so good it spurred thecreation of a small business.

No matter which cookies you favor, now’s the time to get baking. Crucially for 2020, cookies are portable and easy to share while maintaining a social distance, and endlessly adaptable to suit various tastes and dietary restrictions. You can also wrap them up andput them in the mail, and (carefully) deliver them to friends and neighbors less messily than a pie or cake. If your household is small,you can freeze themto ensure holiday baked-goods abundance will stretch into the new year.

Since cookies are what we all need right now, we’ve put together a treasure trove of cookie knowledge, whether it's finding the perfect chocolate chip cookie for your textural needs, figuring out how to roll out dough without getting flour everywhere, hunting down the most aesthetically pleasing cookies, or finding outwhich cookies to mail orderto the folks you might not be able to see during this pandemic holiday season. Go forth and cookie.

Baking guruDorie Greenspanknows that if you roll out cookie dough repeatedly and keep flouring the surface, the dough can get tough. But if you roll cookie dough between two sheets of parchment paper, it means that you can eliminate the flour mess and preserrve the delicate crumb.Read More.

Having a great chocolate chip cookie recipe up your sleeve is excellent. What’s even better is having several, so you can take your pick depending on what mood you’re in and what kind of texture and flavor you want to achieve.Read More.

Cookies are such a joyful, comforting treat, and we’re all for big batches if that means getting to savor them just a little while longer. However, there are also times when you might not want to enjoy them all at once—and that’s ok! Maybe you want to prepare a batch in advance; maybe you’rebaking for one, and trying to finish three to four dozen cookies before they go stale seems like an (understandably) daunting task. That’s where your freezer comes in.Read More.

If you're already set with your own tried-and-true holiday cookie recipes, consider perusing some of Ina Garten's best cookie-making tips to make sure they come out perfectly.Read More.

In a holiday season when face-to-face cookie swaps are inadvisable, to say the least, making cookies to send to friends and family is one of the cheerier pursuits you can engage in. But you've gotta make sure they arrive intact and in time.Read More.

今年,尽管互换可能暂停或look different, cookies are still welcome at any holiday table (or, a holiday bed, which is acceptable in 2020). We asked bakers for their best holiday cookie tips including how to freeze them, work with gluten-free flours, celebrate Hanukkah with cookies, and more.Read More.

Whether you're baking for the holidays, for family and friends, or for the photo, sometimes you need cookies that don't just taste amazing, but look amazing, too. This lovingly assembled assortment is for you.Read More.

Understandably, cookie demand is at an all-time high right now, for both baking and ordering online. Fortunately for us, hundreds of great bakeries and cookie purveyors are selling their treats online nationwide. We rounded up the biggest cookie retailers, as well as plenty of our favorites across the country.Read More.

Sablés.Thumbprints.Chocolate Chip. Cookies are always a delight and come the holiday season, they’re just as fun togiftas they are to eat. In this roundup, we’ve included all kinds of cookie-adjacent presents, from cookie cutters and stamps to already-made cookies (for those who prefer instant gratification).Read More.

Whether it’s baking with kids or adding an elegant touch to a holiday dessert spread,cookiecutters can make all the difference. Even the most practiced bakers and dessert artists use stamps and cutters to perfect their creations, and there’s no reason you can’t do the same. Flex your best piping skills or let some of these cutters and stamps do the outlining for you.Read More.

There's a particular alkaline edge to the season if you're a person who is attuned to this sort of thing: the fissures that form from the pressure of the holly-jolly crushing up against the reality of the day. My mother was stressed, so I was stressed, (and I assume her own mother had stressed her out), and while I'm sure that actual good and light and love was happening around me, there's a thick layer of dust that settled on my brain's pleasure center, and just one thing could blow it away: the arrival of my grandmother's cookies.Read More.

Feature Illustration: Jenna Brillhart