Cookie Swap

Last Christmas, more than 100 of you entered your best cookies in our Share Your Holiday Cookie Photos contest on FineCooking.com.

We were so impressed, we asked for recipes, and these four were our picks. Each is unique, but all are treasured family cookies. Meet the bakers, and find a few new favorites to add to your holiday recipe collection.

Bow Tie Cookies with Apricot Preserves

Debbie Reid, Clearwater, Florida

I treasure these cookies because they’re one of the first things my mom taught me to bake when I was a child. She found the recipe in an old regional cookbook (we’re from Chicago). We made the cookies every year, and over time, we tweaked the recipe to make it our own. Although the original recipe had a different name, we always called our version “klotchies” because they were just like the kolache cookies we loved from a small Polish bakery down the street.

Bow Tie Cookies with Apricot Preserves

Chocolate-Covered Sandwich Cookies with Dulce De Leche (alfajores)

Andy Corson, Sandy Hook, Connecticut

My wife is from Argentina, and the first time I traveled there with her, I fell in love with alfajores—delicate shortbread cookies with a gooey dulce de leche filling and a coating of dark chocolate. Several years—and many cookies—later, I was finally able to recreate them at home, just the way they tasted in Argentina. They’ve been our holiday go-to cookie ever since.

Chocolate-Covered Sandwich Cookies with Dulce De Leche (alfajores)

Coconut Chocolate Almond Biscotti

Beth Kujawski, Crown Point, Indiana

I was thinking about my favorite candy bar, Almond Joy, and wondering if I could add those flavors—the almond, chocolate, and coconut combination—to biscotti. It worked! Now, these cookies are a holiday favorite in my family.

Coconut Chocolate Almond Biscotti

Gingersnap Snowflakes

Daniella Caranci Verburg, Toronto, Ontario

I wanted to capture the flavor of gingersnaps in a cookie that I could roll out and cut into festive shapes. Every Christmas, I make these with my niece and nephew, who love to cut them into snowflakes. After we bake them, I fill a couple of pastry bags with the icing and let the kids go to town.

Gingersnap Snowflakes