Good Housekeeping Holiday Cookies: 100+ Fun and Festive Treats

This colorful but somewhat skimpy collection of treats offers up breezy tips for a tasty holiday season. “Classic Cookies” include linzer stars and giftable shortbread bites with a variety of glaze options. There’s also the less familiar Persian Nan-e Berenji, made with rice flour, cardamom, and rosewater, and Chinese almond cookies. The “Traditions with a Twist” chapter features sourdough snickerdoodles and chai tea cut out cookies. Things get a bit more elaborate in “Showstopping Sweets,” which includes extensive instructions for gingerbread house construction and pumpkin spice cookies cut and decorated with butter cream to look like yule logs. Easy “Not Quite Cookie” recipes provide hurried home cooks with hacks for enhancing ready-made ingredients, like dipping store-bought madeleines in melted chocolate. A final chapter covers vegan and gluten-free options. Frustratingly, many of these recipes require special equipment, including food processors and cookie presses, which is often not indicated until the step at which these items come into play. Instead of an equipment or pantry list, there’s unnecessary filler about how to host “the perfect cookie swap” party with such obvious advice as to send invitations “3 to 4 weeks before.” It’s not perfect, but the range of sweets on offer means this still has plenty of appeal. (Oct.)