The Ultimate Minnesota Cookie Book: 100 Best Recipes from the Star Tribune's Holiday Cookie Contest

by Lee Svitak Dean, Rick Nelson, Tom Wallace (Photographer)

Overview

A fresh batch of deliciously distinctive recipes from the Star Tribune’s beloved annual cookie contest—with even more recipes, enticing photographs, and bakers’ stories

Cold winters call for warm kitchens and cookie baking, especially around the holidays. The Ultimate Minnesota Cookie Book, a compendium of Minnesota’s rich baking traditions and innovative recipes, stirs up winning treats from twenty years of the Star Tribune’s popular holiday cookie contest.

Significantly expanding and updating its 2018 predecessor, The Great Minnesota Cookie Book, this collection features thirty-five new recipes, including Grasshoppers and Dark Chocolate Fig Rolls, Tiramisu Twists and Cardamom Cherry Buttons, Diablo Snowballs, Spumoni Squares, and Maple-Roasted Walnut Delights. This sweet-tooth treasure trove of cookie recipes will inspire bakers to discover how many ways flour, sugar, butter, and eggs (plus several unexpected ingredients) can be combined to create new favorites for the holidays—or any time of year.

The best of the best, these contest-winning cookies are accompanied by beautiful photographs and baking tips, insights, and essays. Indulge in these delightful, mouth-watering recipes while Minnesota’s best bakers share stories of cherished holiday traditions, recall memorable cookie moments, and celebrate how baking brings us together.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781517918170
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	11/05/2024
Pages:	328
Sales rank:	120,903
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.78(d)

About the Author

Lee Svitak Dean was the longtime food editor at the Star Tribune, where she guided the Taste section to multiple James Beard Awards, an Emmy, and national recognition as “Best Food Section.” She is author of Come One, Come All: Easy Entertaining with Seasonal Menus.

 

Rick Nelson was the Star Tribune’s restaurant critic and food writer for twenty-four years. He is a James Beard Award winner, and his writing has been included in four editions of the annual Best Food Writing anthology, which highlights the finest American food journalism.

Editorial Reviews

10/01/2024

Bakers in Minnesota take their cookies seriously, as evidenced by the Star Tribune's annual holiday cookie contest. Launched in 2003, the contest would go on to become an annual, beloved tradition. Dean (food editor at the Star Tribune) and Nelson (Star Tribune's restaurant critic and food writer) have now expanded and updated their 2018 collaboration, The Great Minnesota Cookie Book, adding 25 new winning recipes to the 75 collected in the original cookbook. After covering the origins of the contest and offering tips for better cookie baking, the authors divvy up recipes into chapters by type of cookie, such as sandwich, drop, and bar. Each recipe includes a friendly note from its contributor(s) and is formatted in an easily accessible style with excellent color photographs of the finished treat. Recipes, some original creations and others riffs on cookies from other sources, range from sweet holiday treats, including candy cane sugar cookies and sugar plum doodles, to biscuits with more of a savory edge, such as smoky blue-cheese cherry cookies. VERDICT This collection of simple and sophisticated cookie recipes would be a welcome gift to any baker hoping to augment their holiday cookie repertoire.—John Charles

Library Journal