Cookies for the Holidays: 75 Recipes for the Sweetest Season

For a limited time we have copies signed by Tracey Zabar.

Tracey Zabar treats cookies as a way to welcome people and mark good things, and she leaves it up to the baker to decide which cookie fits which occasion rather than assigning each one a fixed holiday. Her fifth baking book gives bakers who want that kind of flexibility seventy-five recipes, organized into named sections by type of cookie rather than by holiday: Chocolate Chip, Chocolate, Sugar, Spicy & Fruity, Nutty, Biscotti & Bars, and Macaroons & Meringues.

Some cookies suggest a specific season, like Melting Snowmen Cookies for winter or the chopped fresh fruit in her Apple Cookies for Halloween, but most are hers to reassign. Her Totos, a spicy chocolate cookie inspired by her grandfather's hometown in Sicily, feel right for any time of year, and she encourages bakers to change up the coloring on her Red-Striped Meringue Kisses to suit whatever occasion they're actually baking for.

Most of the book stays approachable, easy enough for young bakers to manage on their own or take on as a project with a parent or grandparent. There are showier options too, like sugar cookies finished with edible flowers pressed on just before baking. But as a whole Cookies for the Holidays rarely requires special skill or equipment.

Friendly, unfussy, and built for baking together.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.