For many people, cookie baking is part of their holiday season traditions. Drawn from the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Holiday Cookie Contest, The Great Minnesota Cookie Book gathers well more than 100 recipes, many of them relatively easy to prepare. A few of them nod to the state’s Scandinavian heritage—the Swedish almond chocolate macaroons are cocoa filled and chocolate coated—but most emerge from that great eclectic mixing bowl of middle America.
The color photographs are enticing, especially those orange chocolate cookies and the cherry pinwheels. Each recipe comes with an origin story. “A skeptic may wonder how many new cookie recipes there can be,” editors Lee Svitak Dean and Rick Nelson quip. The Cookie Book begins to answer the question, showing how the chassis of flour, butter, sugar and eggs can be customized in innumerable ways.
