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GO AHEAD, call me a Grinch. I realize what I’m about to say is heresy, especially at this time of year. But here goes: I do not like baking cookies. Are you still there? I could get you a drink to calm your nerves. (I am not at all opposed to holiday nips.) Give me a chance to explain. I love to eat cookies. But making them is a drag. What seems at the start like a fun holiday project involves many or all of the following: mixing, chilling, rolling, shaping, baking, rotating, cooling, decorating. What’s worse is that sometimes after all that work, the cookies are just meh. Here comes the Christmas miracle to brighten this holiday tale: After a lifetime of Grinch-ing, I recently had what you could call a Cindy Lou Who moment. (Maybe baking, she thought, could truly be fun. / If the baking, perhaps, could quickly be done!) I set out to build the ultimate cookie plate: a handful of recipes that present such a balance of flavors and textures and complement one another so well as to please most any palate—with a minimum of fuss and no need to pad the plate with a dozen or more options. My first move was to dig up my grandma’s circa-1980s biscotti recipe, always a family favorite. Grandma was a terrific cook, but she was influenced (scarred?) by the low-fat mania of that decade. Her biscotti had no butter! I researched traditional recipes and discovered, to my surprise, that this is fairly common. Still, a cookie without butter? It just seems wrong. I worked in a few tablespoons, and, to boost the nuttiness, I toasted the walnuts and substituted nocino, an Italian walnut liqueur, for vanilla extract. Next, I turned to my friend Solveig, who comes from a family that takes cookies seriously. Growing up in Minnesota, she always came home to a brimming tin on the kitchen counter—“No store-bought cookies for us,” she recalled cheerfully. At Christmas, her mother made as many as 20 varieties: ginger snaps, Baby Ruth bars, Finnish almond, pecan, maple and one simply called “The Cookie“—clearly a must-bake. An intoxicating mix of oatmeal, brown sugar, butter, dates, walnuts and coconut, “The Cookie” gets a smear of cinnamon-coffee icing. I worried that might be a step too far for a recovering Grinch. But Solveig insisted the frosting makes “The Cookie,” and she’s right. It takes all of 5 minutes to make and adds so much depth and warmth. Every cookie plate needs a little chocolate, and I knew just what I wanted for mine: the Evening Hour cookie from New York’s City Bakery. It’s intensely chocolaty, the kind of cookie that satisfies the chocoholics and wins over even the sugar-and-spicers with its crunchy texture. To my surprise, there was no City Bakery cookbook. And no newspaper, magazine or pesky blogger had persuaded City Bakery’s owner, Maury Rubin, to share the recipe, either. When I approached him, Mr. Rubin kindly invited me to sit down and chat. Over a cup of coffee and, yes, a cookie, he explained why he doesn’t share recipes. The short answer: If everyone could make cookies as good as his, he’d be out of business. So I set out to make my own approximation. I tested recipes from cookbooks both trendy and timeless. Ultimately, I adapted the excellent chocolate shortbread from San Francisco restaurant A16. The result wasn’t exactly the Evening Hour, but still a showstopper: salty chocolate shortbread studded with dark chocolate and crunchy cocoa nibs. Best of all, it’s a slice-and-bake cookie, which means I can mix up a batch of dough and keep it in the freezer. When I need cookies, they’re done in 15 minutes. Finally, for visual flair, I needed a cut-out. I don’t need to explain why intricate decorating wasn’t part of the plan. But the time required wasn’t my main objection. It was that most of those gorgeous cut-out cookies taste like a cardboard box. Mine would have to delight the tongue as much as the eyes. While cut-outs are traditionally flavored with vanilla or almond or lemon, I wanted a whisper of gingerbread. So into a basic sugar-cookie dough went cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, ground cloves and black pepper. Simple enough. But there’s no getting around the time-consuming process of rolling, chilling and cutting. ‘It satisfies the chocoholics and wins over even the sugar-and-spicers with its crunchy texture.’ For help, I turned to Dorie Greenspan, a baking guru with 11 cookbooks to her name, including the forthcoming “Dorie’s Cookies.” She couldn’t understand why I didn’t like the baking part, but she did understand the frustration of rolling out dough. “All these recipes tell you to chill the dough before you roll it,” she said. “But then when you take it out of the fridge, you have to let it warm up again or beat it mercilessly with a rolling pin.” Her trick? Roll the dough just after mixing between pieces of parchment paper. It rolls out more easily and takes less time to chill. In just 30 minutes, you’re ready to cut and bake. I’m happy to eat these plain. (I didn’t call them Stars of Christmas for nothing.) But a sprinkle of sanding sugar makes them extra festive. And baking them was so easy, even I didn’t complain. Yes, it’s true, I have to say: Our Grinch’s love of cookies grew three sizes that day.
