For the 4th Day of Cookies I am sending you on an adventure over to one of my favorite blogs, 101 Cookbooks. The amazingly talented Heidi Swanson has agreed to provide us with our 4th cookie, and boy did she deliver! Her Sparkling Ginger Chip Cookies are real beauts. read more+++

Growing up, my aunt was the primary cookie-maker in our family. Every Christmas Eve we would all look forward to the giant plate of cookies she would bring (actually, it was usually a sweater box from Marshal Fields that she had lined with waxed paper and filled with cookies). Her cookies were famous. There were an assortment but what I really looked forward to were what we always called kolaches, or more phonetically: kolachkies. They were an unsweetened pastry dough with assorted fruit fillings, somewhere between a cookie and a pastry. Man, I loved those cookies. read more+++

DORIE GREENSPAN! I’m sorry, I can hardly contain my excitement over this next guest! Dorie Greenspan is one of my baking heroes— she is a baking goddess. Though we have never met (someday!), I feel as if I know her from spending so much time with her cookbooks and website. I even discovered one of my favorite restaurants in Paris thanks to her (Bistro Paul Bert). Her books are the ones I return to most often when I am trying to figure out a recipe problem or want to feel inspired to bake something new. Baking, From My Home to Yours is the book that I recommend if someone is only going to have one baking book on their shelf or doesn’t know where to start. I mean, there is an entire blog dedicated to this book and hundreds of home cooks bake her recipes every week.

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Welcome, dear readers, to the first of 12 DAYS OF COOKIES! That is right, from today until December 12th, I will be bringing you a new post and a new cookie recipe each and every day. 12 Lottie + Doof-style cookies to make for your friends and family (or yourself). But that isn’t all! The best part is that I am going to have some very special guests helping me out along the way. Who, you ask? Well, you’ll just have to wait and find out, but I promise it will be good. We’ve been working together for the last few weeks pulling together some very delicious cookie recipes to share with all of you! Starting now… read more+++