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One of the most popular collections of in-house developed recipes, New York Times Cooking releases its top cookie recipes of the year every December to the delight of its avid readers. Ranging from classic candy cookies to globally inspired innovations, this year’s seven cookie recipes all offer a unique approach to the perfect cookie. Over winter break, The Harvard Crimson tried these recipes, with the goal of testing how college students could fare against professionals.
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These gooey, almond-y, and incredibly sweet cookies created by Sohla El-Waylly perfectly balance a soft-crunch caramelized exterior with a slightly cookie-dough-esque melted interior. These cookies are neither fancy nor pretentious, but they allow for stress-free baking with an easy, fail-safe recipe. For some, these cookies could be categorized as a punch-in-the-face kind of dessert due to their extreme sweetness, but if you want a sweet, fun, and playful cookie, this is the recipe for you.
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Yewande Komolafe achieved perfection with this recipe. Fresh lemon zest and a simple, tart icing contrast the melt-in-your-mouth richness of the buttery shortbread, creating a well-balanced cookie that always leaves you wanting more. Though the recipe does not require a significant level of technical skill, piping out the curls felt excessive and unnecessary, considering that the dough could have simply been shaped by hand — yielding the same result and halving the time and effort spent on this recipe. Regardless, the final product was excellent, meriting these cookies a spot in the classic cookie rotation for years to come.
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Created by Eric Kim, these cookies were exactly as their title promised: A matcha latte in cookie form. These subtle, not too sweet cookies are topped with a dollop of semi-sweet buttercream, beautifully reminiscent of the foam of a latte. The matcha flavor, while unmistakably present, is not overpowering and is nicely balanced out by the saltiness of the peanut butter that the recipe calls for — a perfectly balanced, cupcake-like cookie to be paired with coffee (or a matcha latte, or would that be too much?) in the afternoon.
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Though daunting at first glance, Samantha Seneviratne’s recipe for these colorful cookies is customizable to the skill — and patience — level of any home baker. With an orange-spiced base and vibrant royal icing on top, these cookies are guaranteed to turn heads at any neighborhood cookie exchange. If royal icing isn’t your favorite, a drizzle of white chocolate augmented with food coloring makes for an excellent and time-saving replacement, though this substitution does result in a different, meltier texture.
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This blondie recipe, created by Melissa Clark, is perhaps the most surprising of the recipes. When one thinks of a blondie, or a brownie for that matter, they are typically reminded of a classically dense and sweet dessert. These blondies, which maintain that reputation, also add another dimension: a delicate lightness and intricacy — qualities that are often lost in blondie and brownie recipes in general. The recipe’s incorporation of freshly grated ginger, cloves, and cinnamon elevated the blondies, while not entirely taking away from their wholesome characteristic. The dark chocolate drizzle (which the recipe notes can be used in lieu of white chocolate) adds a further complexity to the blondies’ effect.
Neapolitan Checkerboard Cookies
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These Neapolitan Checkerboard Cookies were created by Sue Li as a playful reconstruction of the time-honored Neapolitan checkerboard cake. Interwoven layers of strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla shortbread yield a result that lets each flavor stand on its own. Vanilla, when placed alongside chocolate, generally tends to fade into the background; this, fortunately, is not the case here. Not too sweet, flavorful, and boasting the perfect texture, these rewarding cookies are easy to make and can be paired nicely with tea in the summer.
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Vaughn Vreeland checked all the boxes in this recipe, delivering a spicy chocolate cookie, a gooey marshmallow center, and a crunchy cinnamon sugar coating. With both cayenne and cocoa powder, these cookies had a lot going on between the diverse textures and intense flavors. Regardless, especially when fresh-baked and paired with a cold glass of milk on a snowy day, these cookies were simultaneously reminiscent of the winter yet tremendously warm.
—Staff writer Stella A. Gilbert can be reached at stella.gilbert@thecrimson.com.
—Staff writer Thomas A. Ferro can be reached at thomas.ferro@thecrimson.com.
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