My Mom Makes Hundreds of Christmas Cookies Every Year—This Is My Favorite

Baking cookies brings back many memories from my childhood. My great-grandma baked oodles of cookies each year for the grand cookie platter that served as the only dessert on Christmas Day. She also filled 5-pound coffee cans with cookies to give to each family as a gift. 

My mom started her own cookie-baking tradition when she got married 30-plus years ago. She hit her peak when my sister, Jennie, and I were kids, baking a thousand cookies or more each holiday season. We moved away from our extended family when I was in elementary school yet, every year, we drove to Michigan to spend a week with them. Since we could never host a gathering, my mom felt that bringing a cookie platter was her way of contributing.

The process started right after Thanksgiving, when my mom would pull out her big stack of cookbooks and her overflowing recipe boxes and pick the 10 cookies she would make that year. She baked only one kind of cookie a day, and she baked at least 100 of each variety.

I especially loved when she would make linser teig, a recipe passed down from her grandmother. They're cut-out cookies rich with egg yolks and sour cream, so the dough is forgiving to roll out. Jennie and I always got to help decorating them with colorful icing and sprinkles.

As Mom baked each cookie recipe, she stored them in the freezer until it was time to put together gifts for our teachers and my dad’s office. But the bulk of the cookies went into the car-top carrier for our annual Christmas trip to Michigan, where she ­assembled spectacular platters for all the parties we attended. 

My parents moved back to Michigan in 1997, but my mom still bakes hundreds of cookies each year, despite now being able to host herself. She sends dozens to my little family in Vermont, and to my sister in Minnesota. And she still brings her fabulous cookie platters to whatever holiday party they attend. 

And she’s kept a mental list of who loves which cookie. My husband is partial to her oatmeal cookies, which are a bit of her own invention, packed with dried cherries that she mail-orders from the cherry capital of Michigan, Traverse City, along with white chocolate chips and pecans. My cousin Michelle adores her stained-glass cookies flecked with bits of gumdrops. And my sister loves her thumbprints made with almond paste and filled with cherry jam. She even started making several nut-free batches of cookies just for one of my cousins who has a nut allergy.

What’s my favorite, you may ask? I have several, but one of the ones I always reach for first is her Pecan Tartlets. She presses bits of cream cheese pie dough into a mini muffin tin, then spoons in a pecan-pie-like filling. If you don’t love working with dough, this one is soft and particularly forgiving, so I suggest you give them a try. Maybe they'll be one of your favorites too.

Pecan Tartlets

Dough

¾ cup whole-wheat pastry flour

½ cup all-purpose flour

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

4 ounces reduced-fat cream cheese, softened

¼ cup canola oil

Filling

1 large egg, beaten

1 cup chopped pecans

¾ cup packed brown sugar

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. To prepare dough: Mix pastry flour, all-purpose flour, butter, cream cheese and oil in a large bowl with a wooden spoon just until a coherent dough forms. Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes to reduce its stickiness.

2. Position rack in lower third of oven; preheat to 350°F.

3. Roll the dough (it will be soft) into a 15-inch log. Cut the log in half, then cut each half into quarters, then cut the quarters into thirds to yield 24 equal portions, about 1 tablespoon each. Press each piece of dough into a mini muffin cup, making a well in the center and pressing the dough up the sides of the tin to form a tartlet shell.

4. To prepare filling: Combine egg, pecans, brown sugar, butter and vanilla in a large bowl. Divide the filling evenly among the 24 tartlet shells.

5. Bake the tartlets for 10 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 325° and bake until the filling is puffed and the crust is lightly golden, 10 to 12 minutes more. Let cool in the pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Turn the tartlets out and let cool completely, about 30 minutes.

Makes 24

To make ahead: Store airtight at room temperature for up to 5 days or freeze for up to 1 month.