Dessert, Cookie Recipes

Tender cream cheese cookies wrapped around walnut halves and dusted in powdered sugar. Just 5 ingredients, melt-in-your-mouth rich. Makes 2 dozen elegant bon bons.

Soft, cake-like carrot cookies with pureed carrots, golden raisins, orange zest, and cinnamon. Tender drop cookies that taste like miniature carrot cake bites. Comes together in 30 minutes flat.

Chocolate chow mein clusters bind crunchy chow mein noodles with melted caramels, peanut butter, and chocolate chips. A no-bake retro candy ready in 20 minutes.

Buttery chocolate madeleines with a Kahlua syrup brush for extra moisture. These shell-shaped French cookies stay fresh for days and freeze beautifully.

Buttery pecan coconut cookie balls with a hint of almond, baked golden and finished with a tropical pineapple honey glaze or a roll in powdered sugar. Makes about 6 dozen bite-sized treats.

Light, airy coconut meringue cookies topped with candied cherry halves. Made with egg whites, sugar, and shredded coconut, these gluten-free bites are crisp on the outside and chewy in the center.

Buttery coconut shortbread pressed into tart pans and baked golden. Made with unsweetened coconut, chilled butter, and vanilla for a crisp, sandy cookie with tropical flavor.

Turn any boxed cake mix into soft, chewy cookies with just eggs, margarine, flour, and milk. Five minutes of prep, endless flavor possibilities. The easiest cookie hack around.

Decadent chocolate mint melt-aways: tender piped mint shortbread topped with white chocolate mint ganache and dipped in bittersweet chocolate. Three layers of cool mint and rich chocolate in one cookie.

Double chocolate slice-and-bake refrigerator cookies with melted chocolate, mini chips, and a hint of cinnamon. Make-ahead dough freezes for 2 months.

Drop molasses cookies with buttermilk, brown sugar, ginger, and cinnamon rest overnight for deep flavor. Soft, cakey cookies with that old-fashioned dark molasses chew.

Fancy spritz cookies are tender, buttery pressed cookies enriched with ground almonds and almond extract for a marzipan-like flavor. Shape them with a cookie press into pretty holiday wreaths and stars.

Fattigmann is a Norwegian fried pastry cookie flavored with cardamom or cinnamon, twisted into slit diamonds and crisped in lard. A traditional Scandinavian Christmas treat with powdered sugar.

Italian pizzelles with butter, sugar, eggs, and a hint of anise pressed in a hot pizzelle iron into delicate snowflake-patterned wafer cookies. Traditional Italian holiday cookie.

Classic Girl Scout-style trefoil shortbread cookies with butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Roll-and-cut sugar cookies for the trefoil cutter, makes 4 dozen.

Glazed apple gem cookies: small drop cookies with chopped apple, raisins, and nuts, dipped in apple juice glaze while warm. Soft, spiced, and packed with fall flavor.