Five cookies (with recipes!) to bake for Christmas

Mix up your cookie box with fruit, spice and chocolate (of course)

Hello! Hello!

Bakers, you’ve got 8 more days. Eight more days until your home-baked Christmas cookies have to be ready for munching – wrapping, gifting or dunking in eggnog.

Did I sound like Noel Fielding calling the time for the Great British Bake-Off? It’s what I was going for. But while the time announcements in the tent always send me into a panic – I don’t know how the bakers do what they do under such tremendous pressure – 8 days is plenty of time to bake up batches of cookies for boxes and platters, parties and Santa. Really.

Tell me if I’m wrong, but I think I’ve seen more stories and YouTubes and ‘grams about cookie boxes than ever. Right? It can’t be the pent-up urge to bake – we’ve been baking like mad since the pandemic began. I think it’s the pent-up need to share. To make things for others. To be kind and sweet. It’s also just cookies. We love them and they make the perfect gift for anyone. Everyone loves cookies.

So here are my ideas about choosing cookies for a box:

• I think…