FOOD & LIFE

The American-Statesman's Holiday Cookie Swap

By Addie Broyles
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Central Texas kids might still be sorting their Halloween candy, but many of us are already looking ahead to the two biggest food months of the year: November and December. The holidays are for spending time together, but it doesn't hurt to have a few good things to eat, too.

To help kick things off, how about a Holiday Cookie Swap? We're bringing the old-fashioned idea of a cookie exchange — where home cooks create a batch of their favorite cookies to trade, including recipes, with others at a holiday party — to the 21st century with a virtual swap to find Central Texas' best cookie recipe. Through Dec. 2, submit your favorite cookie recipe to our online recipe database at austin360.com/cookieswap. (If you need help submitting recipes to the online database, give me a call at 912-2504 and I'll walk you through it.) Once you're in the database, which already has close to 500 recipes of all kinds from the Wednesday food section and from readers, check out other cookie recipes. Then bake them, rate them and comment on your favorites.

We'll take reader comments and ratings into account when we select the top five recipes and announce the finalists Dec. 4. Then on Dec. 17, we'll throw an open-invite party and — with the help of some of Central Texas' best and most well-known bakers — we'll pick a winner who will not only go home with prizes but the title of Austin's Best Cookie of 2009.