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- The L.A. Times Holiday Cookie Bake-Off returns after a several-year hiatus with 10 creative winners.
- A panel from the Food section team, three pastry chefs and a baking instructor judged 25 finalists’ cookies for this year’s selection.
- Each recipe tells a story.
The L.A. Times Holiday Cookie Bake-Off is back, and after judging more than 150 entries, we have our winners.
Here are this year’s 10 best reader cookie recipes — a collection of reinvented snickerdoodles, Danish biscuits, molasses cookies, citrus-flecked snowmen, jam-filled thumbprints, tender shortbread, crispy cookie bark, mini stollen and big whoopie pies.
The call for readers to share their best holiday cookie recipes is a tradition that goes back to 2010, when the Food section launched the bake-off. This year’s bake-off was the first since 2017. In November, recipes from 25 finalists were prepared by students and faculty from Los Angeles Trade-Technical College’s culinary arts program for a panel of judges including editors, writers and our art director from L.A. Times Food, former LATTC baking instructor and author Robert Wemischner and three pastry chefs: Bakery by the Yard’s Sherry Yard, Fleurs et Sel’s Lara Adekoya and SweetBoy Bakery’s Ben Sidell. (Yes, we ate a lot of cookies.)
“You have to accept each cookie for what it’s supposed to be,” says the award-winning Yard. “Each one has an opportunity to be individual and pop with flavor. Is it innovative? Is it Grandma’s? Does it tell a story?”
The winners came to the Times Test Kitchen and shared their stories of cookie inspiration. We loved the classic and the experimental, the weird and the wonderful — a party in a holiday cookie box.
A German Christmas bread as cookie
Roxanne Lecrivain’s Clementine Stollen Cookies
Roxanne Lecrivain bakes cookies throughout the year for her co-workers and students at the high school in Calabasas where she teaches French. Every year she creates a new holiday cookie and throws a cookie-exchange party with friends.
“The date is set in July, and invitations go out right after Halloween,” she says.
Last year’s holiday cookie was a mini version of stollen, the traditional German Christmas bread studded with dried and candied fruit, filled with marzipan and coated in melted butter and powdered sugar. Originally from Toulouse and formerly an international language consultant, Lecrivain says she fell in love with stollen when she was visiting a friend in a small mountain town in Germany during Christmas. She wanted to replicate it as a cookie.
Clementine Stollen Cookies
“I’ve never had any issues with making stollen,” she says. “It’s not hard if you follow the steps.”
Now that she lives in Los Angeles, her stollen cookies have a California touch: She makes candied citrus with clementines from a neighbor’s tree. You could purchase candied orange or lemon peel at the store, she says, which works great too, but “the candied clementine segments are so good and very easy to make!”
Ginger, spice, pear’s so nice
Cher Yujuico’s Pear and Ginger Thumbprints
Cher Yujuico stocks up on cookie tins at Hobby Lobby — 20 to 30 at a time — starting in November so that she’ll have enough to give out as Christmas gifts.
“I have a really big family,” says Yujuico, who plans to bake hundreds of cookies the week of the holiday. “It gets kind of crazy at my aunt’s house with gifts, pictures and karaoke. I don’t know who might show up, so I have extra cookie boxes.
“I like to add one new thing each year,” she says, and this time it’s a pear and ginger thumbprint that’s soft and tender rather than the sturdier ones that are traditionally a bit crunchier.
Pear and Ginger Thumbprints
Yujuico says she prefers a more chewy texture and “found that if you mix together butter and oil for the fats, the texture is chewier but still has the flavor from the butter.”
The jam highlights seasonal pears. Use Bosc, Bartlett or Anjou. This is a quick, fruity jam, brightened by lemon juice and spiked with ginger. Both the jam and the cookie itself have the oomph of plenty of dried ginger.
A frosted cookie with citrus glimmer
Jake Hagen’s Winter Cookie with Cardamom, Citrus and Almond
Born and raised in Granada Hills, Jake Hagen grew up baking cookies with his grandmother for the holidays, including classic snowballs and sugar cookies with sprinkles and icing.
“My grandma always had the four grandkids over to bake,” Hagen says. “She and I were always looking for recipes.”
Winter Cookies With Cardamom, Citrus and Almond
Now a professional baker, Hagen creates a holiday cookie board every year: “I always had a creativity that burned inside me to expand the normal five or so cookies, and that grew to eight, then nine and that got to 25.
“This cookie is what made me fall in love with cardamom to begin with. It’s an old recipe we have been making for years for Christmas, and I never celebrate a Christmas without this cookie. It looks so beautiful and snowy with the icing, and a little orange zest really adds a pop.”
A molasses cookie reimagined
Sharon Brenner’s Spiced Molasses Cookies with Apple and Ginger
Thick, chewy, salty, milk-and dark-chocolate chunk cookies are Sharon Brenner’s forte. Her friends request them, she takes orders for them and sometimes she sells them on weekends at Altadena Beverage. She prefers a chewy-fudgy cookie, one that’s even better the day after baking, when it’s had the chance to set.
“I would love for a guru to teach me to make different kinds of cookies,” Brenner says, “but this chewy-chunky is a direction I was comfortable with. I had these huge, dense molasses cookies at a bakery in Bishop, and it was just so satisfying that I had the idea of a molasses cookie in my head.”
Spiced Molasses Cookies With Apple and Ginger
Brenner’s is extravagantly textural, with pieces of dried apples, candied ginger and crunchy demerara sugar on top. Because she likes “a salt-leaning kind of sweet,” she adds miso to the dough.
“Growing up I didn’t even know cookies were a Christmas thing. It’s not something we really participated in,” she says. “As I got older I realized there was a world beyond latkes.
“I just really like cookies. I’m not looking for a mountain of a cookie. I’m not a crunchy cookie person either. I like some chew, some body in the middle and textural variation.”
Is a cake a cookie? This one is
Vanessa Galindo’s Sweet Potato Whoopie Pie with Maple-Orange Cream Cheese Filling
This is a big, fun bun of a cookie — soft and cakey and fragrant with warm holiday spices. Put two together, filled with an orange-and-maple take on cream cheese frosting, and you have whoopie pie. Traditionally made with moist chocolate cookies, Vanessa Galindo’s version leans into the season with freshly roasted sweet potatoes, baked until they release their caramel-y juices.
“I like cakey cookies,” Galindo says. “I like a good, crisp biscuit cookie too. But what I really like is a cakey cookie that’s warm and spicy.”
Sweet Potato Whoopie Pie With Maple-Orange Cream Cheese Filling
A month ago, Galindo launched her own micro-bakery, Tender Batch, creating weekly drops of cakes, pies, cookies and other baked goods for pickup. “I’ve always loved food,” she says. “I’m originally from Guadalajara, and I remember waking up to the smell of my mom’s pound cakes, simple things. In the summers she would take us to the Mercado de Abastos. She had connections in the market for the best stuff.
“What I’ve learned through her was how organized she was in the kitchen. Also quality. She believed if you had really fresh quality products, you don’t have to create complicated recipes. That’s why I roast my sweet potatoes. That really does make a difference.”
Shortbread with a coffee edge
Fiona Zhang’s Brown Butter Espresso Shortbread
“I have a confession. I actually don’t love shortbread,” says Fiona Zhang, “but I was trying to think of a cookie recipe that would be good with coffee,” a pretty simple cookie with not too many ingredients.
Zhang created these buttery, nutty, elegant shortbread cookies for a friend who’s a musician.
“I was trying to come up with something for his album release party. Cookies are easy to feed a bunch of people, and he really loves coffee, so I wanted to make something that had coffee in it.”
Brown Butter Espresso Shortbread
She baked several iterations of a butter-and-espresso cookie.
“I tried normal butter and espresso, and it was fine. Then I thought, ‘This would taste nice if I browned the butter, which isn’t usually used for shortbread cookies.”
She landed on the exact right balance of espresso and brown butter.
Danish raspberry delight
Janice Knight’s Bestemor’s Raspberry Cream Wafers
Janice Knight remembers the Christmas parties her husband’s Danish family used to throw in Solvang, Calif.
“It was a huge celebration with a big Christmas tree, 50 people, all different ages,” she says, “and all the men dressed with bolos and big belt buckles, because they were horse people, like Danish cowboys. And there’d be these cookies out even before they served the meal.”
Bestemor's Raspberry Cream Wafers
Among them were cookies from her husband’s grandmother, Johanna Johnsen, who emigrated from Denmark in 1923, traveling through Ellis Island eventually to arrive in Solvang. Johnsen made Danish butter cookies and the kind of cream-filled sandwich cookies that Knight’s sister-in-law now bakes every year, similar to the “Danish waffles” that Solvang’s Scandinavian bakeries sell. Delicate, tender, airy, slightly puffed cream biscuits are filled with sweet raspberry buttercream, to which is added a spoonful of almond extract.
“I love that they’re a fun sandwich cookie, and melt in your mouth,” Knight says. “The almond and raspberry flavor is refreshing, not cloying. And I love that they’re small. You can eat one and go on your merry way and be satisfied.”
Cookie-and-eggnog-in-one
Kirsten Mossberg’s Winterdoodles
Kirsten Mossberg, in pursuit of the perfect snickerdoodle, knew she wanted to incorporate the flavor of eggnog into her cookie.
“It’s such a great flavor for a holiday-themed cookie, and I wanted a spiced custard.” she says.
In honor of her Swedish grandmother, who taught her how to make snickerdoodles, she leaned heavily on cardamom. “I think all pastries taste better with cardamom.”
Winterdoodles (Snickerdoodles With Eggnog Custard)
The next step was to fashion a cookie that would hold the custard: “The shape is symbolic of having eggnog with a snickerdoodle” — a shallow bowl of a cookie filled with silky eggnog custard.
After several experiments to create pillowy-soft and chewy cookies, three different custard recipes and feedback from co-workers, neighbors and friends, Mossberg came up with her Winterdoodle cookie.
“I tried varying spice levels of the custard and spice level of the cookies. I had my neighbor come over and taste test all the custards,” she says. “It surprised me that it bakes so well with the cookie. I do think it’s meant to be enjoyed with a spiced drink.”
A marshmallow-nut cookie with caramel lace
Shant Nazarian’s “Deck the Halls” Cinnamon Cookies with Caramel
It’s the middle of the night. Your newborn baby can’t sleep. You can’t sleep. So what do you do? New father and avid baker Shant Nazarian experiments with cookies.
“This started off as a cinnamon snickerdoodle and then transitioned to more of a spiced cookie,” Nazarian says. “We didn’t want to add chocolate chips because it would distract from the spices and caramel. My wife really loves marshmallows; we both like pecans. It melds salty and sweet together, with salted butter and not too much sugar in the cookie.”
'Deck the Halls' Cinnamon Cookies With Caramel
Because he appreciates a dessert with some complexity, Nazarian says, he added an innovative caramel component: Before baking, a dollop of caramel sauce is pooled underneath each ball of cookie dough. Once baked, the cookie is both soft and crunchy, with a lacy skirt of caramel that has spread beyond the edges — like a crunchy lattice on the bottom.
“I try to bake a lot,” says Nazarian, a research attorney whose mom formerly owned a bakery in Glendale specializing in French and Armenian pastries. “My job’s pretty analytical, so this is one way I can express my creativity. Sometimes I wing it.”
The no-fail cookie crowd pleaser
Andrea Potischman’s Chocolate Pecan Cookie Bark
Andrea Potischman says she “wanted a cookie that was fail-proof basically. This is that cookie, for all of my friends who are terrified of baking. Nobody can mess it up. This really can’t be ruined.”
You don’t need a mixer, and there’s no shaping.
“I was inspired by friends who told me they don’t like doing that kind of thing,” says Potischman, who went to culinary school and worked at restaurants in New York before moving to Northern California and founding her own blog, Simmer and Sauce, focusing on “great food with solid recipes and reasonable ingredient lists.”
Chocolate Pecan Cookie Bark
This cookie requires fewer than 10 ingredients, and it’s all finished — including prepping and baking — in 45 minutes.
She encourages experimenting because it’s such a forgiving recipe: use different nuts, or even omit them, try various kinds of chocolate. You can bake the dough in a smaller pan for a thicker cookie. Bake it longer for a darker, crunchier cookie. Dip it in melted white or dark chocolate — with a partial dip, drizzling it with a fork or even putting the melted chocolate in a pastry bag.
“Add more chocolate and people get really excited,” Potischman says. “Add sprinkles if you want to glam it up for a cookie swap.”
Roxanne's tips on how to throw a holiday cookie party
Roxanne Lecrivain started throwing a regular holiday party for friends and neighbors several years ago. It evolved into a cookie exchange, and then a competition. Lecrivain has some expert advice about hosting a cookie party.
• “Have a special reward if you’re planning on it being a competition. I get a small wooden spoon engraved saying ‘Winner of the 2025 cookie competition,’ which people can display in their kitchen — it’s $5 on Etsy and makes the day of the winner.”
• “Keep it light. I used to prepare so much extra food, and then have enough to eat for a week, so now I let the cookies be the star of the show and just have a salad and cheese board with homemade bread, crackers, olives and veggies.”
• “Ask people to bring an extra box, or have bags, for people to take cookies home. There will be plenty of leftovers to share.”
