Magic and Christmas Cookies

There’s a little magic that comes with baking Christmas cookies. It’s not just the sparkle of the sugar or the thought of waking up to a half-eaten plate of cookies, courtesy of a visit from Santa. More than that, it’s the tradition: the mixing, rolling, and decorating, and the time spent together. Memories in the form of a sweet and special treat.

For Kathryn Wilson, Christmas cookies are not a luxury solely prescribed to the holidays. For her and her friend Adele Bentsen, December brings the culmination of a months-long, spirited taste-testing process by which Christmas cookies are baked and recipes gathered and eliminated. Only the best make it into their famously beautiful and delicious cookie tins. (Their Christmas-cookie quest and favorite recipes were featured in The Buzz in The Great Cookie Tin Bake-Off: Two friends and their Christmas quest in Dec. 2020 and in The Best Holiday Cookies: What to make and give this year in Dec. 2021.) 

But long before the summer several years ago when a Pilates class conversation about cookies turned into a cookie-tin tradition, Kathryn was meticulously baking cookies and mailing tins, filled to the brim with cookies, to her nieces in college. “This was pre-Adele, before she was recruited to the big cookie adventure,” Kathryn laughs. 

Kathryn Wilson has been passionate about baking since she was a child. She especially loves testing – and sharing – holiday cookies. Here, she offers some of her best Christmas cookies to her father, Charles Hall. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Laura Grove Prouty was at Vanderbilt (the same school Kathryn attended, and where Laura’s parents met), and Emily Grove was at Elon. Their college care-package cookies came with years of memories of baking together in Kathryn’s kitchen.

When they were little, Kathryn recruited her nieces as bakers after her sister Allison, the girls’ mother, died of breast cancer. “Allison was diagnosed right after Emily was born,” Kathryn says. “It was there microscopically when she was pregnant, and they found it right after she had Emily. Laura was 2.”

After their mother died – the girls were 7 and 9 – they would go to Aunt Kathryn’s kitchen to bake with her. “Baking is such a big thing in my life,” Kathryn says, “and they would come over and we would bake bread or cookies, or we’d decorate cookies.” Kathryn’s own boys, Marshall and Merrick, were a few years older than the girls.

Before that, Kathryn had been the only baker in her family. “My mother did not cook, my mother did not bake,” Kathryn says. “My sister did not like to bake. Even my grandmother would have me over as a child to bake cookies, but she’d pull out slice-and-bakes! That was my grandmother cooking. 

“That’s why I started baking, when I was probably 12 years old. I started with cookies, and then went to breads when I was 15. It was kind of my own thing; I guess it was an open field. Nobody else had claimed it.”

Laura Grove Prouty (left) and Emily Grove (right) learned to bake with their star-baker aunt Kathryn Wilson. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Not only that, but Kathryn says that her father Charles Hall, a longtime tax attorney at Norton Rose Fulbright (at 94, he still has an office downtown), doesn’t even like cookies. “Really, he prefers not to eat sugar,” Kathryn says. “He’ll say, ‘I really like your whole-grain bread, Kathryn.’ He’s health conscious. He will eat a cookie on occasion, but if I give him whole-grain bread he will say, This is heavenly.”

Even though Kathryn’s father prefers her bread, he is also partial to her gingersnaps. “They have to be very, very thin and crisp,” Kathryn says. “In my teenage years I would bake them from this teeny tiny little bit of cookie dough and dip the base of a glass in sugar and press them to be paper-thin. He loved those because they would just snap. But that recipe is not as popular with the rest of the world!”

Kathryn’s dad doesn’t entirely agree with her about his distaste for cookies. “I actually like cookies,” he says, “I just try not to eat sweets. I limit myself.” When asked what cookie he would choose if he could have anything, he laughs. “Well, I hate to tell you, but it wouldn’t be homemade; it would be an Oreo Double Stuf [sic]. I have them here now and I’m trying not to eat them. If I have one, I have 50.”

Charles says Kathryn has always had a passion for baking. “When she was a teenager, Kathryn cooked so much I thought she might go to the Culinary Institute [of America]. When she was 14, she made baked Alaska,” he says. “It’s wonderful to see the granddaughters wanting to do it too.”

The Santa cookie jars belonged to Kathryn's grandmother, Louise Watkins, aka Gran. Leftmost plate: Speculoos Cookies and Chocolate-Dipped Cookies. Middle plate: Ultra-Peanut Butter Cookies on outside, Almond Spritz Cookies, Speculoos Cookies at center. Rightmost plate: Triple Ginger Cookies in front, Linzer Cookies behind. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

As a grown-up, Kathryn has expanded her repertoire considerably and shares it freely with her nieces. That’s where the magic comes in.

“Baking isn’t difficult, but it’s a little labor intensive,” Kathryn says. “You can be in the kitchen together and talk and talk about cookies, and then talk about other things. Baking together is an easy way to have an activity with lots of time to also talk and be together. Hours and hours. We would talk about What cookie cutter do you want to use? Which recipe do you want to bake? There’s always something new to bake.”

“I remember going to Aunt Kathryn’s when we were really young,” Emily, a server at Tiny Boxwoods, says. “We would go over just to bake cakes. I remember going to make my birthday cakes. We always got to pick out the pans, and she always had fun ones. We would layer them on top of each other, and I remember stacking little stars on top of one of the cakes. Decorating was half the fun.”

Laura’s memories bubble up with Kathryn sending them to Camp Waldemar with sandwiches on bread they had made together. “I felt like the coolest kid on the bus,” she says.

Laura, an archivist for the Dominican Sisters of Houston, bakes her own bread now. “I’ve done a lot of normal sandwich bread,” she says, “and I’ve also gotten into whole-wheat bread. Making bagels is a two-day process, but that’s very satisfying, and my husband loves it.” Laura says all the baking with yeast is not totally easy, “but it’s also not as hard as you’d think.”

HOLIDAY CHEER Kathryn Wilson says it's not Christmas without something ginger. Her father Charles Hall is a fan of Kathryn's gingersnaps, and everyone else loves her Triple Ginger Cookies. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Emily prefers baking cookies and pies. “I like things I can do in an afternoon. So lots of chocolate chip cookies, a lemon chess pie, a peanut butter cookie.

“One summer our parents were remodeling our house, so we stayed with Aunt Kathryn. I remember she had just taken a class on how to decorate with royal icing, and we would spend the morning baking cookies in a bunch of different shapes and picking out colors and decorating techniques.”

But now it is Christmastime, after all, and Kathryn is most definitely in Christmas cookie-baking mode. She is working in what she and her husband Tom called her “dream kitchen.” Tom died two years ago, just after they began a kitchen remodel. It made him happy to know that Kathryn would be using her dream kitchen after he was gone.

This fall, Kathryn has been scoping out new cookbooks and new recipes and searching for the prettiest tins. “I’m deeply into the planning ahead,” she told us. “And that’s an understatement.”

Kathryn loves reading cookbooks and choosing the recipes she’ll try. “I have an entire shelf of cookie cookbooks,” she says, “and I eagerly await the recent releases.” Her favorites right now are Dorie Greenspan’s Dorie’s Cookies, Sarah Kieffer’s 100 Cookies, Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Cookie Bible, and Zoë François’ Zoë Bakes Cookies. “That’s my current favorite,” she says. “I love it because instead of dividing the book among roll-out cookies and bar cookies, she does commune cookies (she grew up on a commune in Vermont), then Protestant cookies, then Jewish cookies, then worldly cookies, then chocolate chip obsessions…she’s just the cutest thing.”

There are more cookbooks that Kathryn consults, too many to list. “Everyone has different tastes,” she says. “There was one cookie somewhere called The Cookie That Changed My Life, and I told Adele, It’s not changing my life.” 

Kathryn has so many tips for baking and cooking, but there’s one she calls a game-changer. “There’s a recipe app called Paprika, and it’s where I store all my recipes. It’s on my phone and my computer, so I always have my cookbook with me on my phone. I can send a recipe into the app, and once it’s there I can cut it in half, double, triple. It does all the math for me. I can make notes, I used this particular pan, or I used this ingredient and this is what happened. 

“I told Adele she had to get it and she said I have all my notebooks and it’s all very organized, and I have the New York Times app, and I do not want another app. We went around for about a year, and now she has it and has twice the recipes I have and says How did I live without this app?”

Emily Grove (left) and Laura Grove Prouty (right) learned to bake with their star-baker aunt Kathryn Wilson. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

While Laura says Kathryn has never served her anything she didn’t like, she also says Kathryn’s Chunk Wild cookies are her best. “It’s the best cookie I have ever had,” she says. “And it’s one of my favorite recipes that she’s passed down.”

“I’ll copy my sister,” Emily says. “The Chunk Wilds are my favorite. They’re really incredible. And there’s also a Triple Ginger cookie that she makes that I love.”  

“We like to talk about cookies,” Kathryn says. “Recently I took Laura four cookie samples and said Tell me if you think any of these are cookie tin-worthy.”

Laura says holiday baking with Kathryn is her favorite. “It’s a whole activity,” she says. “She’ll have dough in the freezer ready to go, so we can pop something in the oven to have a snack. We’ll sit in her beautiful backyard with Phoebe [Kathryn’s Cavalier King Charles Spaniel] and talk Vanderbilt football and eat cookies. It’s a lovely afternoon.”

When The Great British Baking Show is airing new episodes, Emily and Laura get together every Friday after work and watch. “We have seen every single episode,” Emily says. “And we always tell Aunt Kathryn if there is an American one, she needs to apply, because we know she would do great.”

Kathryn’s father would agree. “She’s a professional,” he says. (Turns out there is an American version. Kathryn, we think you'd be the star of the show!)

While cookie magic is undisputable, for Kathryn, it’s a simple trick to figure out. “It’s pretty low stakes to make a batch of cookies, just a pound of butter and a bag of sugar and a bag of flour and a few hours of time, and voila, you’ve got a wonderful treat baked with love.”

BEAUTIFULLY BOXED Recipients of the tins filled with cookies by Kathryn Wilson and Adele Bentsen (from left) are in for a treat. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Adele Bentsen’s Signature Triple Ginger Cookies

Alice Medrich’s Ginger Cookies recipe for Food52

“Adele and I call these ‘Triple Ginger Cookies’ and they are tremendously popular,” Kathryn says. “The uncooked dough balls freeze beautifully, and then we roll them in the coarse sugar right before baking.”

2 ¼ cups / 285g unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground allspice
¼ teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons / 113g unsalted butter, melted and just warm
¼ cup / 85g unsulphured mild or full-flavored molasses (not blackstrap)
½ cup / 100g sugar
1⁄3 cup / 66g firmly packed brown sugar 
2 tablespoons finely minced or grated fresh ginger root
1 large egg
¾ cup / 113g ginger chips or crystallized ginger, cut into ¼-inch dice, shaken in a coarse strainer to remove loose sugar
About ½ cup / 100g demerara or turbinado or granulated sugar for rolling

If you are baking the cookies right away, position the racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and salt and mix thoroughly with a whisk. Set aside.

Combine the warm butter, molasses, both sugars, fresh ginger, and the egg in a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Add the flour mixture and ginger chips and stir until incorporated. The dough will be soft. If possible, cover and refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours, or (better still) overnight, for the best flavor and texture.

Form the dough into 1-inch balls (15 grams of dough for each). Roll balls in the demerara sugar and place them 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake, rotating the sheets from back to front and top to bottom about halfway through the baking, for 10 to 12 minutes, or until they puff up and crack on the surface and then begin to deflate in the oven. For chewier cookies, remove them from the oven when at least half or more of the cookies have begun to deflate; for crunchier edges with chewy centers, bake a minute or so longer.

Set the pans or just the parchment liners on cooling racks. Cool the cookies completely before storing. The cookies keep for several days in an airtight container.

Sarah Kieffer’s Chocolate Dipped Cacao Nib Cookies

Kathryn says, “Chocolate Dipped Cacao cookies are easy to make and fun to dip in chocolate. Cacao nibs are sold in the bulk chocolate section at Central Market. They add a wonderful crunch!”

4 cups / 568g all-purpose flour plus more for dusting
1/3 cup / 40g cacao nibs
1 teaspoon fine salt
¾ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ cups / 339g (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 tablespoons refined coconut oil, room temperature (shortening works, too)
1 ¾ cups / 350g granulated sugar
1 large egg plus 1 large egg yolk, room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
8 ounces / 226g semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, melted

In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade, process the flour, cacao nibs, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, mix the butter on medium speed until creamy. Add the coconut oil and mix again on medium speed until smooth. Add the granulated sugar and mix again on medium until light and creamy, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the egg, yolk, and vanilla and mix again on low speed until combined. Add the flour mixture and mix on low speed until completely combined. Use a spatula to fold in any dry pieces of dough that may be lingering on the bottom of the bowl. Divide the dough in half; it can be used immediately or wrapped in plastic and refrigerated for up to 4 days (let the dough come to room temperature before rolling).

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line several sheet pans with parchment paper.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough somewhere between 1/8 inch- and ¼ inch-thick (the thinner the cookie, the crisper it will be, so this will depend on your preference). Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes, then slide a spatula underneath the dough and transfer the shapes to the sheet pans, leaving 1 inch of space between the cookies. Chill the pans of cookies in the refrigerator for 15 minutes before baking. Dough scraps can be re-rolled and cut out again.

Bake the cookies, one pan at a time, until cooked through, 12 to 16 minutes. For a softer cookie, bake for 12 minutes; for a crisper cookie, bake longer, until light golden brown around the edges. Place the baking pans on a wire rack and let the cookies cool completely on the pans before dipping in chocolate. Repeat with the remaining cookies.

Dip half of each cookie in the melted chocolate. Once the glaze is set, cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Linzer Cookies are pretty and special. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

King Arthur Baking Company’s Linzer Cookies

“Linzers are beautiful and a favorite of mine to give,” Kathryn says. “Keeping the dough cold is the key to making it easy to work with. It is well worth the time to chill the cut-out cookies before baking.”

To make pretty cookies, she suggests: “Put only a tiny amount of jam filling on the base cookie, separately sift the powdered sugar on the top cookie, then put the two together. I also pair the base and top before assembly; there are always some slightly bigger or smaller.”

12 tablespoons / 170g unsalted butter, softened
½ cup / 99g granulated sugar
Zest of 1 lemon or 1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups / 160g unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ cup / 72g almond flour
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
Raspberry jam or lemon curd, for filling
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

To make the dough: Beat the butter, sugar, and zest (or cinnamon) until light and fluffy, scraping the bowl as needed, about 3 minutes. Add the yolk and vanilla and beat until combined.

Meanwhile, whisk together the flour, almond flour, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture and mix until just combined. Don't over-beat. Divide the dough in half, and pat each half into a disc. Wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour. To assemble the cookies: Remove the dough from the refrigerator, and let it soften for 5 to 10 minutes, until it feels soft enough to roll. It should still feel cold, but shouldn't feel rock-hard. On a floured surface, roll one disc of dough out about 1/8 inch-thick. Using a 2 ½ inch round cookie cutter, cut out cookies. Transfer rounds to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Gather the scrap dough, roll, and repeat. If at any time during this process the dough becomes sticky and hard to work with, simply refrigerate it for about 20 minutes, until firm.

Place the cut cookies (you should have 15 cookies) in the refrigerator for 30 minutes and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

While the first half of cookies is chilling, cut 15 rounds from the remaining dough. Once you've transferred these cookies to a baking sheet, use your smallest cookie cutter or the end of a round piping tip to make a peekaboo cutout in the center of each. Place cookies in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to chill.

Bake all of the cookies for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the edges are just beginning to turn brown. Let them cool for 5 minutes on the pan, then transfer to a rack to cool completely.

Place the cookies with the holes in them on a cookie sheet and sift confectioners' sugar over the top. Turn the remaining cookies flat side up and spoon ½ teaspoon of jam or lemon curd into the center, spreading it slightly. Top with the sugar-dusted cookies.

Store filled Linzer cookies, well wrapped, at room temperature (when filled with jam) or in the refrigerator (if filled with curd) for several days; freeze for longer storage.  

Ultra-Peanut Butter Cookies, Almond Spritz, and Speculoos are a few of Kathryn's favorite Christmas tin cookies. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Speculoos from Zoë Bakes Cookies

“My newest favorite cookie is from Zoë Bakes Cookies, and they are super-simple slice and bake Speculoos,” Kathryn says.

1 ¾ cups / 210g all-purpose flour
½ cup / 60g almond meal or flour
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons / 140g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup / 200g lightly packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons light or dark molasses (not blackstrap)
1 egg yolk, at room temperature

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, almond meal, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves, and nutmeg. Set aside.

In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, brown sugar, and molasses on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Mix in the flour mixture on low speed until just combined. On a sheet of plastic wrap, form the dough into a 6-by-3-inch brick, using a bench scraper to form neat sides. Wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or up to 3 days. You can also freeze the dough for about 1 month.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Using a very sharp knife, cut the chilled dough along the short side into slices 1/8 inch thick and 3 inches long. Lay the slices on the prepared baking sheet. They won’t spread much, so they can be placed close together.

Bake, one sheet at a time, in the middle of the oven for about 15 minutes, until they are a caramel-brown color. Allow to cool on the baking sheet completely.

Notes from Zoë: Speculoos, the cinnamon-spiced Belgian biscuit, became well known and much loved in my family due to the Lotus Biscoff cookies that are often served mid-flight. I don’t usually take my inspiration from airplane snacks, but these are a phenomenon. You too may have nibbled on one while you were miles high in the air. Or you may have sampled “cookie butter,” the wildly popular spreadable version of the rich, caramelly cookie, which would also be amazing spread on these cracker-like cookies. The cookies get their snap and rich flavor from a combination of almond and wheat flours. I’ve added a few more spices to the mix than is traditional and shape them into a brick before slicing them into dunk-able rectangles. It’s simple, and they taste just divine.

Kathryn's nieces Laura and Emily agree that her Chunk Wild Cookies (pictured, on left and right) are her best. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Chunk Wild Cookies 

From Kathryn Wilson, adapted from a King Arthur Baking recipe

16 Tablespoons butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1¼ teaspoons salt
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2½ cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2/3 cup white chocolate chunks or chips
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup peanut butter chips
1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
1½ cups chopped pecans or walnuts

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) four baking sheets, or as many as you have.

Beat together the butter, sugars, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.

Using a blender or food processor, process the oats with the white chocolate until the oats are finely ground, and the chocolate is mostly ground; a few small chunks are okay.

Add the oats and flour to the butter mixture, then stir in the peanut butter chips, chocolate chips, and chopped walnuts. Drop the dough by tablespoonfuls, 2 inches apart, onto the prepared baking sheets. Bake the cookies for about 12 minutes, until they're just set. They may be barely starting to brown around the edges, but the tops won't be brown at all. Remove the cookies from the oven, and cool.

These are great to make ahead and store in the freezer. Scoop out the dough onto a wax paper-lined cookie sheet, putting them very close together. Wrap well and freeze for up to two months. They can be baked straight from the freezer, or let them sit on the counter for 30 to 45 minutes, well spaced.

Peanut butter chips can be replaced with dried fruit, such as cranberries, or with other flavors of chips such as butterscotch or cinnamon. The nuts are optional.