89 holiday cookie recipes

The 2nd place winner in the Chicago Tribune's 1996 Annual Holiday Cookie Contest, a simple brown-sugar shortbread from Sandra Petrille of Naperville, Illinois.

Miniature cream cheese tassies filled with apricot fruit filling, nuts, and vanilla in a buttery pastry cup. Bite-sized holiday cookies baked in mini muffin tins.

French lace cookies bake corn syrup, shortening, brown sugar, flour, and pecans into thin, delicate, caramel-toffee disks. Optional chocolate drizzle. Five ingredients, holiday tray classic.

Brigette's almond crescent cookies bring together buttery shortbread, rolled oats, and finely chopped almonds, finished with a dusting of powdered sugar. A classic passed-down holiday bake.

Almond crescent cookies with rolled oats and finely chopped almonds, dusted with powdered sugar while still warm. A heartier, oat-packed twist on classic holiday shortbread crescents.

Holiday decorating icing whisks powdered sugar with a splash of milk and a drop of flavor extract into a smooth, pipe-able glaze for outlining, flooding, and drizzling Christmas cookies.

Cinnamon applesauce ornaments: two-ingredient dough of ground cinnamon and drained applesauce, rolled, cut with cookie cutters, and dried into fragrant holiday keepsakes that scent the whole room.

Chestnut meringues with chopped marrons glaces folded through crisp, snowy French meringue, dusted with cocoa. A delicate, old-world European cookie for tea trays and holiday gift tins.

Yuletide ginger cookies made with oat bran and egg whites instead of butter and whole eggs for a lighter holiday treat. Rolled in festive colored sugar crystals for sparkle and crunch on every bite.