15 Best Cookie Cookbooks for Holiday Baking

The best cookie cookbooks out right now include recipes for chocolate brownies, peanut butter cookies, lemon pie, and savory holiday desserts.

If you love to cook, then it’s time to grab your favorite cookbook. The kitchen is the best place to try new cookie recipes, especially around the holidays. With the right books and utensils, baking becomes fun and easy.

Sally’s Baking Addiction is a top pick for baking cookies, pies, and more. Her recipes are clear, sweet, and full of flavor. From chewy chocolate chip cookies to soft lemon sugar cookies, she has it all.

Pillsbury and Betty Crocker cookbooks are classic choices, too. They have 101 cookie ideas, including peanut butter, sugar, and Christmas favorites. These books are great for cookie exchanges and family baking time.

Looking for the best cookie books ever? Try cookbooks that focus on simple ingredients and tasty desserts. Some even include cooking tips, time-saving tricks, and recipe codes to keep things organized.

So, what is your favorite cookie to bake? Whether it's brownies or butter cookies, the best cookbooks have you covered. I'm here to help you find the right one for your kitchen shelf.

Best Cookie Cookbooks

1. 100 Cookies: The Baking Book for Every Kitchen

100 Cookies is a go-to baking book featuring 100 recipes for cookies and bars, organized into seven chapters.

Chocolatey, fruity, crispy, chewy, classic, inventive—there's a foolproof recipe for the perfect treat for everyone in this cookie recipe book.

• Introduces innovative baking techniques
• Includes an entire chapter dedicated to Kieffer's "pan banging" technique that ensures crisp edges and soft centers for the most delicious cookies
• Nearly every cookie dough recipe is accompanied by a photograph.

Dessert recipes range from the Classic Chocolate Chip made three different ways to bars, brownies, and blondies that reflect a wide range of flavors and global inspiration.

This is the comprehensive yet charming cookbook every cookie lover (or those who love to bake cookies) needs.

• Highly giftable with a textured case and a ribbon marker
• Recipes include Marshmallow Peanut Butter Brownies, Olive Oil Sugar Cookies with Blood Orange Glaze, Red Wine Cherry Cheesecake Swirl Bars, Pan-Banging Ginger Molasses, S'mores Cookies, Snickerdoodles, and more
• A great pick for the home baker in search of a new bake sale recipe or someone who just loves cookies, as well as fans of Sarah Kieffer's blog and Instagram
• Add it to the shelf with cookbooks like Sally's Cookie Addiction by Sally McKenney, Dorie's Cookies by Dorie Greenspan, and The Perfect Cookie: Your Ultimate Guide to Foolproof Cookies, Brownies & Bars by America's Test Kitchen

2. Momofuku Milk Bar: A Cookbook

The highly anticipated complement to the New York Times bestselling Momofuku cookbook, Momofuku Milk Bar reveals the recipes for the innovative, addictive cookies, pies, cakes, ice creams, and more from the wildly popular bakery.

A runaway success, the Momofuku cookbook suffered from just one criticism among reviewers and fans: Where were Christina Tosi's fantastic desserts? 

The compost cookie, a chunky chocolate-chip cookie studded with crunchy salty pretzels and coffee grounds; the crack pie, a sugary- buttery confection as crave-able as the name implies; the cereal milk ice cream, made from everyone's favorite part of a nutritious breakfast—the milk at the bottom of a bowl of cereal; the easy layer cakes that forgo fancy frosting in favor of unfinished edges that hint at the yumminess inside.

Momofuku Milk Bar finally shares the recipes for these now-legendary riffs on childhood flavors and down-home classics—all essentially derived from ten mother recipes—along with the compelling narrative of the unlikely beginnings of this quirky bakery's success. 

It all started one day when Momofuku founder David Chang asked Christina to make a dessert for dinner that night. Just like that, the pastry program at Momofuku began, and Christina's playful desserts helped the restaurants earn praise from the New York Times and the Michelin Guide and led to the opening of Milk Bar, which now draws fans from around the country and the world.

With all the recipes for the bakery's most beloved desserts—along with ones for savory baked goods that take a page from Chang's Asian-flavored cuisine, such as Kimchi Croissants with Blue Cheese—and 100 color photographs, Momofuku Milk Bar makes baking irresistible off-Treats at home both foolproof and fun.

3. Macaron School: Mastering the World’s Most Perfect Cookie

From the macaron master, Camila Hurst comes as your ultimate resource for making perfect macarons. Whether you’ve already tried making this delicious but oh-so-tricky treat or are getting started for the first time, let Camila be your personal guide through every step of the process. 

You’ll learn the fundamentals with an in-depth tutorial for perfect plain shells, packed with step-by-step photos and all of Camila’s best tips and tricks gathered from her experience baking thousands of macarons over the years. 

There are even sections dedicated to shell decorating, sourcing the right ingredients and tools, and troubleshooting common problems.

Practice your newfound skills across 10 shell flavors and 40 drool-worthy recipes for fillings, and soon you’ll be whipping up gorgeous macarons that will wow everyone who tries them! Discover awe-inspiring creations such as:

• Fleur de Sel Caramel Macarons
• Snickerdoodle Macarons
• Birthday Cake Macarons
• Pistachio Macarons
• Black Sesame Matcha Macarons
• Chili Hot Chocolate Macarons

With clear instructions, a treasure trove of knowledge, and mouthwatering recipes, Macaron School will put you on the path to macaron mastery.

4. French Macarons for Beginners: Foolproof Recipes

Learn how you can make the kinds of beautiful and delicious macarons you’d expect to find in a Parisian patisserie in the comfort of your own kitchen. French Macarons for Beginners provides foolproof instructions for mastering these notoriously finicky confections.

From whipping up the meringue to properly folding and piping the batter, this macaron guide takes you through the process in detail, step-by-step, to help ensure success―starting with your very first batch.

This French pastry cookbook includes:

• Macaron basics―Bake up picture-perfect macarons with the assistance of complete, easy-to-follow directions.
• A range of flavors―Mix and match 30 shell recipes and 30 filling recipes to satisfy your personal taste.
• Cookie troubleshooting―Solve problems like cracked shells, grainy ganache, curdled buttercream, and more.

With this macaron cookbook, you’ll learn how easy it is to create incredible, colorful sweets in any flavor you can imagine.

5. Bake from Scratch: Artisan Recipes

This latest collection of over 650 recipes from the editors of Bake from Scratch magazine features step-by-step tutorials, tried-and-tested recipes, and stunning photography. This cookbook will have you mastering yeasted bread, layer cakes, and so much more.

Showcasing fresh, seasonal ingredients and celebrating tradition and history, this edition will offer something for every baking skill level, from novice to expert. So, dust your surfaces with flour and preheat your oven and bakers. 

Let the baking begin! With gorgeous photography accompanying each baked good, you’ll find a wealth of visual inspiration and tutorials to guide you from beginning to baking. 

All recipes have been tested and retested with the home baker in mind, formulated to be both accessible and exciting. Celebrate the joy of artisanal baking with this essential tome.

6. The Perfect Cookie: Your Ultimate Guide to Foolproof Cookies

Portable, fun to make, easy to gift, and open to countless flavor variations, cookies are everyone's favorite sweet treat. America's Test Kitchen has years of experience making the very best cookies; in The Perfect Cookie, the test kitchen has collected all of that knowledge in one place for the definitive guide to cookie baking. 

This comprehensive anthology includes kitchen-tested, never-fail recipes for cookie jar classics, in addition to recipes for rich and chewy brownies, fruit-and-crumble-topped bars, quick no-bake confections, holiday favorites, and even candies like fudge and truffles; they're all included in this gorgeous package, with a full-page photo showing off every recipe. 

And, as only the test kitchen can, there are tips and tricks throughout the chapters, as well as an introductory section to get you started with insight on everything from what makes a cookie chewy versus crispy to what baking sheet you should buy so that your cookies bake evenly every time. The result? The perfect cookie.

7. Dorie's Cookies by Dorie Greenspan

James Beard Award-winner for Best Baking and Dessert Book 2017

This is an all-new collection from a "revered icon" and "culinary guru" (New York Times).

Throughout her baking career, Dorie Greenspan has created more than 300 cookie recipes. Yet she has never written a book about them—until now. To merit her “three purple stars of approval,” every cookie had to be so special that it begged to be made again and again. 

Cookies for every taste and occasion are here. There are company treats like Portofignos, with chocolate dough and port-soaked figs, and lunch-box Blueberry Buttermilk Pie Bars. 

They Might Be Breakfast Cookies are packed with goodies—raisins, dried apples, dried cranberries, and oats— while Almond Crackle Cookies have just three ingredients. 

There are dozens of choices for the Christmas cookie swaps, including Little Rascals (German jam sandwich cookies with walnuts), Italian Saucissons (chocolate log cookies studded with dried fruit), and Snowy-Topped Brownie Drops. 

And who but America’s favorite baker could devise a cookie as intriguing as Pink-Peppercorn Thumbprints or as popular as the World Peace Cookie, with its 59 million Internet fans?

8. The Cookie Collection: Artisan Baking for the Cookie Enthusiast by Brian Hart Hoffman

Become a cookie connoisseur with a variety of flavors and cookie styles. From buttercream-filled sandwich cookies and berry-studded sugar cookies for summer to gingerbread and shortbread primed for the winter holidays, these recipes will see you through every season. 

Find all your chocolate chip-stuffed and caramel-filled favorites. With both classics and contemporary crowd-pleasers, this is the collection you’ll turn to time and time again. No matter the occasion, we’ve got you covered with cookies.

9. Cookies: The New Classics: A Baking Book

100 modern, exciting, and simple recipes that promise to redefine your favorite cookie classics. Move beyond the same-old chocolate chip, peanut butter, and oatmeal cookies with Jesse Szewczyk's collection of 100 brand-new, boldly flavored, and intriguing yet familiar recipes. 

Divided into chapters by flavor profile--

• Chocolatey (Salted Bittersweet Brownie Cookies), 
• Boozy (Brown Butter and Guinness Skillet Cookie), 
• Fruity (Chewy Blueberry Muffin Sugar Cookies), 
• Smoky (Smoked Butter Chocolate Chunks), and 
• Savory (Cacio e Pepe Slice and Bakes)

--These treats offer a kaleidoscope of textures and flavors. 

Filled with stunning photographs and a reassuring guide for making ahead, storing, and gifting, Cookies offers immediate gratification for hungry bakers looking to take their cookies to the next level.

10. Martha Stewart's Cookie Perfection: 100+ Recipes to Take Your Sweet Treats to the Next Level: A Baking Book

The editors of Martha Stewart Living present a new, fun source for anyone looking to make their go-to cookies even better and bolder. These recipes make ordinary cookies absolutely extraordinary—all the familiar favorites you love, but taken up a notch in variety, flavor, and creativity. 

Classic recipes discover new life with unexpected twists such as butter crinkle Cookies and Carrot Cake Thumbprint Cookies. 

Go over-the-top in super-sized fashion with Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookies; get inspired by cultures around the globe with Brazilian Wedding Cookies and Stroopwafels; and celebrate with beautifully decorated holiday treats, such as Easter Egg Puzzle Cookies and Snowball Truffles. 

Whether for a special celebration or a sweet anytime treat, you'll be sure to find inspiration to trade in your everyday cookies for versions far more special—and especially delicious.

11. Pillsbury Best Cookies Cookbook: Favorite Recipes from America's Most-Trusted Kitchens

The third title in the successful Pillsbury cookbook series features 175 of Pillsbury's best-ever recipes for cookies, bars, and brownies. 

Each recipe is accompanied by helpful sidebars such as Kitchen Tips, Make It Special, Recipe Variations, and Ingredient Information, and by bullets denoting recipes as Editor's Favorites or Quick Bets. 60-color photos.

12. Sally's Cookie Addiction: Irresistible Cookies, Cookie Bars, Shortbread, and More from the Creator of Sally's Baking Addiction

Are you ready to sink your teeth into Brown Butter Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies? How about Peanut Butter Nutella Swirl Cookies or Pumpkin Spice Sugar Cookies? 

Featuring a mouthwatering selection of cookies, cookie bars, cookie dough dips, slice-and-bakes, no-bakes, and more, Sally’s Cookie Addiction features dozens of exciting flavors, including chocolate, butterscotch, peanut butter, sugar, coconut, lemon, s’more, and oatmeal- oh my! 

A world of baking wonder awaits you and all the lucky people you’ll share these treats with.

The best part? In Sally’s Cookie Addiction, Sally will tell you how to make each and every cookie in the book ahead of time. So, if you want to start preparing for the holidays, or if you just like keeping cookie dough in your freezer for those critical cookie emergencies, this is your source.

Complete with tips on how to bake the perfect cookie and gorgeous photography, Sally’s Cookie Addiction is the only cookie book you need on your shelf. 

Prepare for your kitchen to be the most popular room in the house while the smells of Warm Chocolate Chunk Skillet Cookies, Lemon Crème Sandwich Cookies, and Soft-Baked Sugar Cookie Bars emanate from the oven!

Hungry for more? Learn to create even more irresistible sweets with Sally’s Candy Addiction and Sally’s Baking Addiction.

13. The Easy Homemade Cookie Cookbook: Simple Recipes for the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, Brownies, Christmas Treats, and Other American Favorites

Everybody loves hot cookies fresh out of the oven. The Easy Homemade Cookie Cookbook is for baked treat lovers everywhere. 

Bursting with irresistible American classics―including old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies, thin mints, and pumpkin spice shortbread―

This cookie cookbook is filled with easy-to-follow recipes that are fantastic for new and experienced bakers alike.

The Easy Homemade Cookie Cookbook includes:

• 150 Beloved Recipes―From sugar cookies and oatmeal cream pies to gingerbread men and turtle bars, learn to make familiar treats everyone will love.
• Sweet Tips―This cookie cookbook simplifies things with guides to stocking your kitchen, helpful tools, and baking basics.
• Yummy Tricks―Learn how to really mix things up with advice for handling leftovers, varying recipes, and using substitutes.

It’s easy to satisfy your sweet tooth―and everybody else’ s―with The Easy Homemade Cookie Cookbook.

14. BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts

"BraveTart" is a cookbook by Stella Parks that celebrates classic American desserts. The book contains meticulously tested recipes, including both down-home delights and supermarket favorites. 

It also explores the surprising stories behind these desserts' origins. The book offers over 200 customizable variations, allowing readers to experiment with the recipes. 

Many readers have found the recipes to be a hit, with people frequently requesting them. The book includes pictures for most recipes, which adds to its appeal. Some readers appreciate the historical context and storytelling provided by the author. 

However, there are also mentions of obscure ingredients and specialized tools required for some recipes, which may make it more suitable for experienced bakers looking to challenge themselves. 

Overall, the book has received positive reviews for its delicious recipes, engaging storytelling, and informative nature.

15. The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion by the Editors of King Arthur Flour

Originally published ten years ago - and shortly after that honored as the James Beard Foundation's Cookbook of the Year (2003) - this cookbook is today every bit as relevant as it was then. 

And now the modern classic is in easy-to-use Flexibound Paperback, with hundreds of easy and foolproof recipes, from yeast breads and sourdoughs to trendy flatbreads and crackers to family favorites such as pancakes and waffles. 

Leading you through the steps of leavening, mixing, proofing, and kneading through shaping and baking, the experts at King Arthur Flour also include their best fried doughs, quick bread, batter bread, biscuits, quiches, cobblers and crisps, cookies, cakes, brownies, pies, tarts, and pastries. 

For more than 200 years, King Arthur Flour has been in the business of making the highest quality key ingredient in all of baking: flour. 

They've done decades of experimentation and research in their famous test kitchens on how the various ingredients in baked goods behave and why. 

The Baker's Companion, a kind of culmination of generations of loving work, brings you more than 350 recipes that teach you which ingredients work together as well as which don't and why. 

It is this knowledge that will allow you to unleash your own creativity and experiment in the kitchen. 

You'll get a complete overview of ingredients in chapters on flours, sweeteners, leaveners, fats, and more. 

You'll find information on substitutions and variations, as well as troubleshooting advice from pros at King Arthur Four. 

You May Also Like: The Best Cookie Cookbooks

• Maman
• The 500 Best Cookies, Bars, and Squares 
• The All-American Cookie Book 
• American Cookie
• Betty Crocker’s Cooky Book 
• Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies 
• The Cookie Book
• Cookie Cookery 
• Cookie Love
• Cookies 
• Cooking Class Chocolate Cookies and Brownies Cookbook 
• Crazy for Cookies, Brownies, and Bars
• Homemade Cookies 
• Food Writer’s Favorites
• Good Housekeeping The Best-Ever Cookie Book
• Good Housekeeping Christmas Cookies
• Great Cookies
• The International Cookie Cookbook 
• Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Cookies 
• Tried and True Cookies
• Christmas Cookie Swap