In 2003, the food writers at the Minnesota Star Tribune came up with the idea of a cookie competition. It caught on, becoming a yearly tradition that continues still today. Former food editor of the Taste section Lee Svitak Dean and former restaurant critic and food writer Rick Nelson collaborated on The Great Minnesota Cookie Book (2018), which chronicled those first 15 years of the best recipes.
Both writers are now retired from the newspaper and their involvement with the cookie competition has ended, but their parting gift to us is The Ultimate Minnesota Cookie Book, an updated edition containing every great recipe from the first book, along with the 25 winning recipes that came out of 2018 to 2022. Each recipe is gorgeously photographed by Minnesota Star Tribune photographer Tom Wallace, with some essays by Svitak Dean and Nelson.
In a recent What We're Reading interview, Svitak Dean and Nelson recalled how the competition started in 2003. “We were sitting in a meeting one day and we said, ‘Wouldn't it be fun to have a reader contest?’ It's something that the Taste section had done years and years earlier and we decided to revive that tradition,” said Nelson.
That first year, Nelson himself baked all of the semifinalist recipes—over 20 different cookies. He explained, “I did it over a weekend and I just thought there's got to be a better way to do this. And so, we came up with a better way where we had other people baking for us for those semifinalists. And it worked out really well for us.”
The competition has been successful in part because it speaks to the baking heritage and culture of Minnesota. Svitak Dean explained, “The heritage, with so many Germans and Scandinavians--they brought with them the traditions of doing a lot of baking, especially around the holidays. With the flour mills and the Pillsbury Bake-Off and Land O’Lakes--it all tapped into what ended up being products that were available here in Minnesota.”
After 20 years of sorting through thousands of recipes, Svitak Dean and Nelson have developed a talent for identifying what makes a good cookie recipe—it starts with butter. Nelson said, “Butter just has so much richness and flavor to it and it adds beautiful color to a cookie. But also, I feel that it should have really wholesome and whole ingredients. I don't think cookies for the most part should be made with Trix cereal or Snickers bars or vanilla instant pudding mix. It should have whole, wonderful ingredients: beautiful nuts, fruits, other flavorings.”
They also looked for new and different recipes. Svitak Dean noted, “We were often looking for things that were just a little bit different than cookies that you might find in other book collections. People who were interested in entering really put a lot of effort into coming up with something new, and it really sparked a lot of imagination … and we love those ideas.”
Through the two decades of the cookie competition Svitak Dean and Nelson have been able to learn and observe more than just delicious recipes. Svitak Dean noted, “We've been able to see trends in other type of cooking appear in our cookie recipes, and so that's been very interesting to follow. We've had years where we've had many cookies that had browned butter and many recipes that would have other unusual ingredients that suddenly had become popular elsewhere.”
One of the most unusual of these popular ingredients was kale—several cookie recipes one year included kale.
“As you can imagine, kale is not a very successful ingredient in cookies,” lamented Nelson.
The competition also highlighted how cookies can be a gateway to baking. Nelson explained, “If you've never baked anything before, you really should start with cookies. I don't want to say they're easy, although a lot of cookies are very easy to make. But they're a very recognizable baked good. And they're not complicated. The beginning baker can start with cookies. Also, if you're a very accomplished baker, cookies can also be very fulfilling to make…Cookies are a great leveler in a lot of ways.”
The Ultimate Minnesota Cookie Book by Lee Svitak Dean and Rick Nelson is available through the University of Minnesota Press.
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