Too Many Cooks: Let There Be Holiday Cookies

You'll be hearing from the staff at FOOD52 every week in Too Many Cooks, our group column in which we pool our answers to questions about food, cooking, life, and more.

We hope your batches of Holiday Cut-Out Cookies are well on their neatly-packaged ways to friends and family far and wide, but we're sure you didn't stop there. This is full-on holiday cookie crackdown mode. Get your baking sheets out, and switch up this year's cookie roster, because we're answering the question: 

What is your favorite holiday cookie? Here's the twist: if someone already claimed your cookie, it is no longer eligible to be your favorite. 

Let the creativity ensue. 

Marian: My honorary second mother, Martha, makes the best peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. She won't share the recipe, and both of her sons are spoken for, so marrying into it is unlikely. It's tragic. 

Gheanna: Pfeffernüsse.

Jenny: The Martha Stewart Chocolate Ginger Snap is a serious pill to make but a go-to every holiday season. 

Amanda: Jenny took mine! I also like my mother's hazelnut lemon cookies, which are like a chewy, lemony macaroon.

Stephanie: My new favorite is candy cane cookies from Christina Tosi. They are crunchy and chewy wonders with marshmallows, cornflakes, chocolate chips, and candy cane bits. And they're huge. I've eaten a lot already. 

Christina: Pizzelles! Another Grandma DiLaura masterpiece. 

Maddy: Speculoos!

Kristen: Love those buttery, sandy powdered sugar balls known as Russian Tea Cakes or Mexican Wedding Cookies -- but why are they called both? That can't be right.

Karl: An old family tradition, and my favorite Christmas cookie: Spritz (aka Swedish butter cookies). 

Jennifer: I don't know if they have a proper name -- Italian Anise Cookies with Icing! 

Lindsay-Jean: Old favorite is gingerbread tiles, but this year my cookie mold is going to be put to use making what's sure to be my new favorite, springerles.

Brette: Secret cookies!! (Thank you, Merrill's mom.)

Merrill: So many choices. I love a good linzer cookie, and also those paper-thin, deeply caramelized lace cookies dipped in dark chocolate.