For the 39th annual Tribune Holiday Cookie Contest, 32 readers submitted recipes for sweet treats, including biscotti and shortbread, bars and balls, and classic chocolate chip and sugar cookies. Some recipes were decades old, passed down from grandparents, aunts, neighbors and friends, and tweaked as the years have gone by.
We saw takes on viral flavors, such as Dubai chocolate, and classic holiday flavors, including gluhwein and eggnog. Some entries included more nontraditional cookie ingredients, such as avocado and hummus, while others embraced classic seasonal spices, such as nutmeg and cinnamon. Some recipes had roots in Jewish, Czech and Italian traditions.
More than 1,800 readers cast over 3,800 votes to decide the 12 finalists that Tribune staffers baked for judging. Guest judges Justin Lerias of Del Sur, Reema Patel, previously of Sarima Cafe, and Asa Balanoff Naiditch of Blame Butter selected Janet Lapen’s Pracny-Inspired Nut Crescents as this year’s top cookie.
“Many people may not be familiar with the pracny cookie,” Balanoff Naiditch said, “so it could be a new experience for a lot of people.”
She praised the cookie’s versatility, noting that bakers could customize it to their preference by using different nuts or flavored sugar.
“It’s a homey cookie that you eat and feel warm inside,” Patel said. “It’s a well-done classic cookie, the texture and flavor are perfect, and I could eat five with a coffee.”
For the second-place treat, an Eggnog Crème Brûlée Cookie by Lauren Wagner, the judges praised the cookie’s concept, with Balanoff Naiditch noting that it perfectly captured festive winter vibes of snowflakes with the glaze and a cozy fireplace with the torched sugar topping.
“It’s a unique cookie that you could find in a bakery,” Lerias said. “I liked the texture, the crack of the creme brulee top and the soft cookie underneath. It was so obvious what it was and the flavor was there.”
For the third-place recipe, Elyse Tish’s MMMM Cookies (Mom’s Mandelbread modified for Marty), the judges praised the flavor combination of chocolate and orange.
Thank you to all the readers who submitted recipes and voted in this year’s contest. We love this cozy holiday tradition, and hope these recipes are a delicious addition to your gatherings this holiday season and beyond.
— Kayla Samoy, food editor
The 12 finalists
- Mutty’s Holiday Hug Cookies by Carl Ioos of Vernon Hills
- Apricot Squares Cookies by Gail Schneiderman of Wilmette
- Cinnamon Pumpkin Pillow Cookies by Sarah McLoud of Gurnee
- Cinnamon Sugar Cookies Decorated with Almond Royal Icing by Tracy McDonald of Plano
- Pracny-Inspired Nut Crescents by Janet Lapen of Downers Grove
- Eggnog Crème Brûlée Cookies by Lauren Wagner of Joliet
- Decadent Almond Bars by Janet Malone of Munster, Indiana
- Christmas Holiday Biscotti by Raymond Orsolini of Villa Park
- Chocolate Surprise by Cathy Lenkaitis of Peru
- Sharon’s Dark Chocolate Toffee Bars by Sharon McHugh of Chicago
- Grandma Viola’s Christmas Jewish Butter Cookies by Jeff Hale of Chicago
- MMMM Cookies (Mom’s Mandelbread Modified for Marty) by Elyse Tish of Glenview
First place
Janet Lapen: Pracny-Inspired Nut Crescents
“It’s a spice cookie,” said Janet Lapen of Downers Grove, our first-place winner. “With clove and cinnamon, and a little bit of cocoa.”
Her recipe for the winning Pracny-Inspired Nut Crescents was adapted from a childhood holiday cookie called pracny, pronounced PRATS-ny, in Czech.
Lapen, 68, has been making the original recipe for more than 60 years with her best friend and neighbor Marion Nyhoff. It was Nyhoff’s mother, Blanche Mohus, who taught the girls how to bake pracny when they were 6 years old, in their old neighborhood in Forest Park.
“The recipe was like a pound of butter, a pound of nuts, a pound of powdered sugar,” said Lapen, a retired operating room nurse. “What made them so special were the molds.”
A neighbor lady had a collection of little individual metal cookie molds, which they all borrowed. Mohus herself learned how to make the traditional cookie as a young girl from that neighbor.
The dough had to be made a day before, then pressed into a thin layer to line the molds. The pracny would bake into crisp, fragrant and nutty shells.
The cookie molds were so treasured that they were willed to Mohus, who would pass them on to her daughter. She still has the molds, and bakes with her best friend, along with their daughters, who remember the woman who became known as Grandma Blanche.
But Lapen wanted to create a recipe that’s easier and doesn’t require inherited cookie molds.
“I tried with this cookie two years ago,” she said. That recipe for Grandma Blanche’s Deconstructed Pracny Cookie was a finalist in 2023. “And I kind of just zhuzhed it up a little bit for this year’s cookie.”
The pracny she once made is not the same cookie that her recipe has become.
“I chop the nuts a little bit coarser instead of finely grinding them,” said our baker, who uses walnuts instead of the original hazelnuts, and simply shapes the dough into a crescent. “It’s crunchy and just a lovely texture.”
Her Pracny Inspired Nut Crescents are a wholly different cookie, she added, but the flavors have stayed the same.
“I’m so very humbled by it all,” said Lapen, mother to two adult daughters. Kaitlyn Lapen is a doctor, and Chloe Lapen is a 3D artist. Our baker’s husband, Bob Lapen, died of cancer at 59 in 2013.
“And I’m a five-year cancer-free survivor too,” she said.
This year for her holiday treats, she’s planning to make a pecan square, a fudge and the date nut breads for which she’s been known among family and friends, that is, until her first-place winning recipe.
“I’m tickled pink about the whole thing,” said Lapen. “I feel like I’m going to be immortal now.”
— Louisa Kung Liu Chu
Second place
Lauren Wagner: Eggnog Crème Brûlée Cookies
Inspired by her husband’s random purchase of a blowtorch, Lauren Wagner did what any proper home baker would do: Create a recipe just to use the blowtorch.
Wagner, a Joliet resident and mental health therapist, loves using eggnog in her baked goods as an ode to her family’s favorite Christmastime drink. But she hadn’t nailed down an eggnog-inspired cookie yet. When her husband turned up with a torch, she immediately thought, “I could brûlée the tops!”
“I tied together (the flavors of) creme brûlée with eggnog with a crackly caramelized topping for the cookies — it’s a fun one,” Wagner, 33, told the Tribune.
The cookie contest gave her another excuse to bake, she said, noting that she often uses baking as a way to unwind and decompress. As a young girl, Wagner said she spent countless hours in the kitchen with her mom, who would bring home tools and techniques from her Wilton baking and decorating classes. Wagner’s grandma was always around, too, effortlessly throwing together layer cakes and fruit pies.
Wagner’s second-place winning cookie captures the cozy flavors Wagner grew up with — sweet, creamy, warm with a touch of spice. In addition to the usual flour, leavening agents, sugar and butter, the soft cookie has a dash of nutmeg and a one-fourth cup of eggnog. Rum extract is optional, but Wagner said she loves the addition. For the creme brûlée element, a couple tablespoons of eggnog are whisked into powdered sugar to create a glaze, which is then sprinkled with a sugar and nutmeg mixture before the blowtorch treatment. (If you don’t have a blowtorch, Wagner suggests popping the cookies under an oven broiler for a minute or less.)
Wagner said the recipe reminded her that traditions don’t have to stay the same to be special.
“It’s a blend of my family’s favorite winter drink and my love of baking, a recipe that bridges generations,” she said. “When I crack through the brûlée top and taste the creamy sweetness underneath, I’m right back in that kitchen — three generations laughing, baking and sharing a glass of eggnog on a cold winter day.”
— Zareen Syed
Third place
Elyse Tish: MMMM Cookies (Mom’s Mandelbread Modified for Marty)
After her husband, Marty, described her mother’s favored mandelbread recipe as “hard enough to pound nails,” Elyse Tish took on a challenge to develop the recipe she entered this year.
Our judges awarded her Mom’s Mandelbread Modified for Marty third place for its classic orange-and-chocolatey flavor combination. They suggested elevating its profile by infusing espresso powder.
But Tish said her husband doesn’t drink coffee. He likes Pepperidge Farm’s orange-flavored Milano cookies, so she modeled the flavor after them. Her mandelbread cookie is soft, dense and leagues away from hammer-like, tough or crunchy: “The MMMM recipe melts in your mouth,” she wrote in her recipe submission essay.
The Glenview resident was nervous for her first entry to face stiff competition in the cookie contest, yet she made an effort on social media to encourage friends and family to vote her into the top 12 finalists.
“I actually have been playing with this recipe for years,” Tish said. “This is because I don’t bake cookies regularly. I’m not a regular homemaker. I’m a retired lawyer. I work as a lifeguard.”
Tish, 63, keeps herself busy beyond lifeguarding. She’s involved with her synagogue and the League of Women Voters, takes continuing education classes and has been married to Marty, who’s also a lawyer, for 35 years. They have a 30-year-old son who lives in Evanston.
She thinks her recipe is the kind a casual home baker can manage well, and it’s not too exotic or complicated, save for finding candied orange peel.
The icing is the latest addition to the recipe that took five years to perfect. Orange zest infused in the icing lends to the cookie’s fruity profile and adds a touch of sweetness, and a simple swirl makes it look pretty on a cookie tray, Tish said.
She suggests icing the mandelbread after thawing and baking if preparing the recipe ahead of time. The icing part can be done in less than five minutes to make it fancier for a spontaneous visitor.
“I also think that makes it very special, because nobody, nobody puts icing on mandelbread. That is not a thing,” she said.
Though the chocolate mandelbread is not at all like the traditional Jewish cookie, or the one her late mother Blossom Skolnick made, she said she bakes it to remember her at her best, when she’d host neighbors over for coffee for hours on end at her home in Skokie.
“What my mother was really good at was making people feel welcome,” Tish said. “That idea that if somebody drops by, there’s always cookies in the freezer that you can just thaw out.”
“Now I’m sharing this little piece of that hospitality with another generation,” she said.
— Lauryn Azu
Recipes
To get the recipes for this year’s winning cookies, read our story here. For more winning cookie recipes from all four decades of the Tribune’s Holiday Cookie Contest, grab a copy of our cookbook, “Holiday Cookies, 2nd Edition,” at chicagotribune.com/holidaycookies.
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