Here Are Alton Brown’s 6 Favorite Holiday Cookies

This time of year a lot of us are using whatever remaining bits of holiday spirit we’ve got to crank out a whole lot of cookies — whether for an edible gift, a Christmas cookie swap, or just because it’s fun and keeps the house warm and smelling delightful. Most people have their go-to recipes: the cookies they remember from their grandparents’ house or the ones someone once made them that were so good that they demanded the recipe. But it’s always nice to give a new cookie or two a try every year, just in case you want to update the old repertoire.

So, to help you out with that, we dug into the archives of Alton Brown’s website and found where he put together his list of six favorite holiday cookies.

None of the cookies are groundbreaking — mostly they are Alton-ified versions of the standards. The top recipe he offers is what he calls “The Chewy,” which is basically a spin on the classic Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie, but with a few ingredient substitutions to make it, well, as the name implies, chewier (hint: he uses bread flour!). These cookies might be little more complex to make, but for those of us who are diehard chewy cookie folks, this is the one. He also offers a recipe for a gluten-free version of The Chewy, because nobody deserves a December without a good chewy cookie.

Read our review: Alton Brown’s Secret for a Perfectly Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie

Alton also mentions his sugar cookies as a favorite, which definitely have a cult-like following. My favorite tip from the recipe is that he uses powdered sugar instead of flour to dust his work surface before rolling out the dough (smart!). Another smart trick for one of his favorite cookies: Alton uses the same roasting and milling of oats that he does in his muffins for the oatmeal cookie, which adds big oat flavor and some interesting texture.

Similarly, the gingersnaps pull in extra ginger flavor — and are very cool-looking — thanks to a triple dose of ginger: ground, fresh, and candied. The most original and visually appealing cookie on the list is Alton’s Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel, which takes that basic sugar cookie and incorporates chocolate into one half and peppermint and crushed candy canes into the other, then rolls them together for a beautiful treat.