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What's New in Holiday Cookies

Baking cookies for family and friends is a holiday tradition that never loses its appeal. But retailers can come to the rescue for time-strapped consumers by offering new, fuss-free mixes and decorative cookies, many made from scratch with natural ingredients and engaging stories behind them. They’re great for hostess gifts, stocking stuffers, gift baskets, entertaining or for everyday munching.

by Julie Besonen

Cookies with a Story

Nikki’s Cookies & Confections, based in Milwaukee, Wisc., was started by Nikki Taylor, who decided that the shortbread cookies she sampled in England were not as good as those of her grandmother. So she began in earnest to replicate that old family shortbread recipe. Twenty-four years later, she has created a full line of flavored shortbreads as well as chocolate layered cookies. This year for the holidays she’s developed peppermint snowmen, made with
Wisconsin butter and pure peppermint oil.They are sold in festive, eye-catching boxes or snack packs designed for use in holiday gift baskets.

“They pop on the shelf,” says Taylor, who keeps her operation in the family with both her mother and nephew part of the company. Nikki’s Cookies & Confections sells cookies in upscale gift shops, grocery and department stores. Health food stores also carry Nikki’s as they contain no preservatives or trans fats.

Monaco Baking Company, Santa Fe Springs, Calif., is a bigger operation, turning out 150,000 cookies a day. Yet it is equally committed to using all-natural ingredients and continues to hand-decorate each cookie. In business since 1994, Monaco has long been known for getting people into the holiday spirit by creating enormous gingerbread boys, trains, carousels and houses big enough to walk through. In a turn of events, Monaco is going small for the holidays this year, with Gingerbread Petites, sold in transparent bags.

“It’s an authentic recipe from Germany, going back to the Middle Ages,” explains Monaco’s Sales and Marketing Director Philip Moreau. “They didn’t have sugar back then so our gingerbread is sweetened with 28 percent honey and spices (ginger, clove, allspice, cinnamon) that were discovered during Marco Polo’s journeys to the Orient.” Moreau notes that for some reason round gingerbread cookies don’t sell as well as those made into boy shapes. “People would rather break off a leg or eat the head,” he says.

Monaco has two new petite versions for Christmas plus one new Vanilla Sugar cookie for Hanukkah. The company will also custom design cookies for a minimum order of 500. Last year, for instance, it developed a number of varieties, from gingerbread girls to cookies with chefs’ hats to gingerbread boys wearing UPS uniforms.

Moreau brings up a good argument for consumers letting Monaco do the baking instead of trying it at home with a cookie cutter. “Making a decorated gingerbread cookie taste good is the hardest thing to do and goes against every rule,” he explains. “Because it’s a shaped cookie you don’t want it to spread in the oven; a good cookie cracks on top a little but to decorate it you want it smooth; the cookie can’t break and yet you don’t want it hard enough that it will break your teeth. We work very hard on the recipe so it tastes good, stays moist and soft and still keeps its shape.”

Like Nikki’s and Monaco Baking’s lines, there is a story behind every one of the Italian products from The Scrumptious Pantry, a small Rye, N.Y.-based importer that supplies independent retailers from coast-to-coast. The farmer/producers are pictured on the packaging “to show they stand behind what they grow and make,” says Lee Greene, the company’s founder. For Christmas she offers cantuccione, a classic Tuscan cookie loaf made with whole wheat spelt flour and dried figs. It’s as big as a foot-long Christmas stocking, which makes it a dramatic addition to a holiday basket. Designed for slicing into biscotti, the cantuccione is then baked again to achieve the desired crunchiness.

Sweets with Something Extra

Getting the cooking method just right is the key to some of this season’s innovative baked creations. To perfect Browniepops™—golf-ball-sized combinations of fudgey brownie interior with crisp, chocolate-dipped exterior fastened to a stick like a lollipop—Marsha Pener Johnston basically spent two years in her kitchen. Once the Kansas City caterer and pastry chef was satisfied she’d gotten it right, she walked into her local Dean & Deluca and announced, “If you’d like to carry these I’d like to make them.” A deal was struck. This was five years ago, and today, Browniepops are sold in nearly 100 retail shops across the U.S. They come in 11 flavors—from Chocolate Malted to Toffee to Mocha—and are decorated with original, seasonal designs. For Halloween there are witches’ hats and tombstones and for Thanksgiving, turkeys or footballs. New Browniepops for Christmas include a red-nosed Rudolf, a snowflake, a penguin and a Santa hat.

“We make every one of them from scratch,” notes Johnston, “with 62 percent American chocolate, butter, sugar, flour and eggs. We hand roll, hand dip and hand paint them, and police each other’s work so they all look perfect. Everybody has input and helps to make a design.”

Browniepops is a mom-and-mom operation, with Johnston’s mother and two daughters part of her team, as well as sculpture and art majors from the local college. “One of them told me it was like playing in Play-Doh every day of her life,” Johnston says. Even though they’re creating “thousands of dozens” of Browniepops a year, it’s still fun, she says, especially when they’re asked to customize the pops for special events.

Boca Bons, a Greenacres, Fla.-based company, offers additional original creations, such as a super-rich combination of truffle, fudge and brownie in one bite. Susan Kanter, president and founder of Boca Bons, was once a clothing designer in New York City’s garment district and used her sense of style to make the product stand out by packaging the sweets in tiny, fashionable cookie boxes, as well as a purse-like Cookie Clutch for the sweet tooth on-the-go.

For this holiday season her company is rolling out a new concept: Cookies with Character™. An Oreo-style cookie is covered in an extra layer of milk, dark or white chocolate, sprinkled with nonpareils or sugar crystals, then adorned in the middle with little characters handmade with icing.

“We’ve got Santas, poinsettias, candles, gingerbread men, toy soldiers and Christmas stockings,” Kanter lists. “I had been thinking of coming out with something new for a while, waiting for a great idea to come along.” The debut of Cookies with Character was a hit at New York’s Summer Fancy Food Show, thanks to their sparkle and sense of whimsy, Kanter says. The cookies are sold in three, six or nine-piece packs and can be customized with monograms for weddings or corporate events.

In the do-it-yourself category, Byrd Cookie Company of Savannah, Ga., is introducing a large gingerbread man, a cookie the size of a man’s hand, that’s iced white and comes with confectionery pens. “You can draw on the cookie the way you would a coloring book,” says Geoff Repella, Byrd’s president. “It’s a great stocking stuffer and fun for party giveaways.”

For Late July Organic Sandwich Cookies, in Barnstable, Mass., it’s more about the ingredients than the looks that set them apart. The limited-edition holiday cookies, for instance, contain antioxidant green tea extract in the filling. The cookies are covered in organic dark or milk chocolate and sprinkled with organic peppermint candy cane pieces. They’re also vegan and kosher friendly.

“We’ve got whole grains in the cookie base,” says Patty McNaughton, Late July’s sales and product development manager. “Our cookies are a little more flavorful than generic sandwich cookies because of our choice of ingredients and the amount of real Madagascar vanilla.”

In Los Angeles, Aunt Ida’s motto for its products is “tradition with chutzpah,” and the company proves it with a new flavor twist on an old favorite. This holiday season Aunt Ida’s rolls out its savory Pomegranate-Pistachio Thumbprint butter cookie. Although Aunt Ida’s is a kosher line, Founder and Chief Executive Amy Goldsmith notes, “We say it’s for Hanukkah and Christmas gift baskets.” Made with all-natural, preservative-free ingredients and bagged in cool, contemporary packaging, the cookies are inspired by Goldsmith’s Aunt Ida—a Brooklyn woman born in 1922, who was in turn inspired by her Sephardic friends to add tastes of the Middle East to her cooking.

“It’s the only pomegranate-pistachio cookie on the market,” Goldsmith notes. “Every time people try it they love it because it’s so different and pretty. It’s a hearty cookie so you don’t need to eat 50 to get satisfied.” She also points out that pomegranates are mystically linked to Judaism, with the pomegranate’s 613 seeds coinciding with the number of commandments in the Torah.

Packaging that Pops

Much of the appeal of holiday gifts is in the wrapping. Leave it to the French to come up with something tres chic in that department: An assortment of Fauchon mini butter cookies and almond thins are carefully packed in a valise with a handle. Importer Taste of Paris is bringing the high-end treats to the U.S. just in time for holiday gift-giving.

Travel also comes to mind with Byrd Cookie Company’s new Gingerbread Latte cookies tossed in coffee powdered sugar. The holiday-themed packaging concept fits into a car’s cup holder for easy snacking. “We also have a whole series of mini cookie jars coming out,” says Repella, “including a Santa and gingerbread boy, plus round tin globes filled with chocolate chip cookies.” In addition, Byrd is continuing its tradition of introducing new cookie tin designs every holiday season, holding Key Lime Coolers, Chocolate Mint, Red Velvet and Gingerbread cookies.

J&M Foods, a family-owned-and-operated company from Little Rock, Ark., is also featuring new collectible cookie tins, with Santa and snowman images that exhibit a vintage look. “We employed artists from Arkansas and Minnesota to design them,” says Greg Parham, director of sales and marketing. “We looked at a number of retailers and the bulk of holiday things that seemed to be selling the best had a Norman Rockwell, nostalgic look, so our family took a vote and that’s what decided it.” The company is offering five new flavors of cookies—Chocolate Chip, White Chocolate Macadamia Nut, White Chocolate Key Lime, Chocolate Chip Pecan, Triple Chocolate—sold nationwide in gourmet specialty shops.

Raleigh, N.C.’s Salem Baking Company, has rolled out gift packaging with a new Signature Collection of its classic Moravian Cookies, available in cigar-style premium keepsake boxes. The Signature Collection features Moravian Cookies enrobed and dipped in artisan blend chocolate, topped with candies such as crushed peppermint or toffee. Flavors include Espresso, Blood Orange and Caramel with Fleur de Sel.

Walkers Shortbread, the 100-plus-year-old Scottish company, has introduced a new holiday gift package for its Festive Shapes line of shortbread cookies. The 12.3-ounce tin features Walkers’ famous red tartan plaid as well as a traditional painting of a winter scene with children playing and making a snowball. The company, whose U.S. operation is in Hauppauge, N.Y., includes four cookie shapes in the tin. These are a Santa Claus face, a Christmas tree, a bell and a star.

Mixing it Up at Home

The enticing scent of cookies baking in the oven can knit family and friends together, evoking wistful memories of what Grandma used to make. Coming on the market in time for the holidays are new quick-and-easy mixes that offer sweet rewards with a minimum of elbow grease.

Stonewall Kitchen has added four new flavors to its cookie mix line-up—Gingerbread, Chocolate Gingerbread, Chocolate Peppermint Fudge and Chocolate Peppermint Crinkle—which only need butter and eggs added. “Even though it’s out of a box we try to make it as close to homemade as possible for people who don’t have time to make cookies from scratch,” says Stacy Burris, Stonewall Kitchen’s marketing manager. “As long as you have a few staple pantry items you can whip up some of our cookies and no one has to know.”

Peanut Butter & Co., which started as a quirky café in New York’s Greenwich Village, has added an old-fashioned cookie baking mix to its line of peanut butter products. Butter, eggs, water and the ability to fork a criss-cross on top of each cookie are all that is required. Lee Zalben, president and founder of Peanut Butter & Co., explains, “You have all the ingredients you need in one handy package. It’s a great way to get the whole family involved in creating a special and delicious holiday treat. Peanut butter is one food that truly evokes memories of happy times from everyone’s childhood.”

And making memories is what the holidays are all about. Whether your customers want everyone to be together enjoying sweets in the kitchen or they wish to spread joy by sending beautiful treats to family far away, gorgeous, delicious holiday cookies fit right in. |SFM|

Julie Besonen is the food editor at Paper magazine, writes a weekly restaurant column for nycgo.com and has contributed to The New York Times and the New York Daily News.