It’s the great cookie issue | Let’s Eat (and bake!)

December is cookie season, and we’re all about it. Whether you’re a baker or a buyer in the Philadelphia area, we have you covered in this special edition of “Let’s Eat.” Read on for recipes and tips, as well as ideas of where to find some of the best that our town has to offer. Yes, you can have it both glaze.

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— Mike Klein

My colleague Jenn Ladd gathered 12 recipes from Philly bakers and social media that are both approachable and intriguing additions to your holiday desserts table. You can make these glazed alfajores (above) from Argentina-born Jezabel Careaga at West Philly’s Jezabel Cafe however you please — with apricot jam, or fig jam, or dulce de leche, or membrillo in the middle. No one’s fillings will be hurt.

Bonus! We offer 12 additional cookie recipes, shared by Philly notables for our Inquirer cookie swap last year. You need to try Eli Kulp’s Italian fig cookies, known as cuccidati, or perhaps writer/comedian Alyssa Al-Dookhi’s Middle Eastern shortbread cookies, called ghraybehs. There’s even one that requires the use of “nice, sexy chocolate bars.”

Tips

♦ 5 must-have cookie baking tools. From a precision scale to wooden and marble rolling pins, home bakers can easily perfect grandma’s recipe or start new traditions with their own creations.

♦ How to throw a cookie swap. Our experts weigh in with their tips, including: Prepare the cookie dough in advance but wait until the day of the swap to actually do the baking.

Not everyone feels like firing up an oven. If you’re craving chocolate chip or anise, dulce de leche, pine nuts, sesame, or something else, this city has a world of techniques and traditions, and modern twists on classics. Contributor Michelle Reese found 12 of the best bakeries around.

Have a favorite Philly-area cookie bakery? I’ll take your ideas here.

“You feel like you can eat a thousand of them,” says fourth-generation baker A.J. Isgro, about his family bakery’s ricotta cookies. “Slicked with a powdered-sugar glaze flavored with vanilla or lemon (and flecked with chocolate chips if the former),” Jenn writes, “a pound of these puppies could easily disappear in minutes.”

We turned to our friends at Drexel University’s Department of Food & Hospitality Management for baking the recipes. Particular thanks to Anne Fraser-Jones, Grace Mailey, Zack Burger, Olivia Stewart, Maxel Kurniawan Suhenda, Victoria Sanchez-Galarza, Brenda Rodriguez-Leonardo, Rebekah Pelkington, Emily Wolfe, Isabella Gigliotti, Caleb Lederman, Vritika Narra, Zae’Onah Howell, and Rosemary Trout.

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