A Very Yankee Holiday Cookie Swap

It’s been nearly 50 years since a small group of women first gathered in a Wellesley, Massachusetts, living room to exchange cookies potluck-style. As instructed, each guest brought a few dozen confections to sample and share. They mingled, enjoyed an elaborate meal, and left with a kaleidoscopic array of bars and drop cookies, crescents and cutouts. That first gathering, in December 1969, was so successful that neighbors Mary Bevilacqua and Laurel Gabel decided to host another the next year. And then the next, and the next….

Today, three generations of Mary’s family share duties in hosting the famous Wellesley Cookie Exchange, which has spawned several Yankee articles and a cookbook. In turn, countless others have adopted the tradition for themselves.

With that in mind, we recently gathered some of our favorite bakers to share cookie recipes and toast the season. But whereas the Wellesley exchange began with handwritten invitations to neighbors, our circle included some virtual friends whose work we’d long admired in cookbooks, on blogs, and in dazzling Instagram feeds. They included Jerrelle Guy, author of the award-winning Black Girl Baking; food stylist Suzanne Lee; photographer and stylist Liz Harris; and blogger Kate van Geldern Bowler, author of New England Invite.

As expected, their cookies were all gorgeous and delicious, ranging from spiced pecan-walnut snowball cookies to gingersnap s’mores to chocolate-espresso bars. We ate and laughed and toasted the season. Times change, technology alternately unites and divides us, but the urge to bake, gather, and celebrate remains the same.

FEATURED COOKIE SWAP RECIPES

• Sour Cream Sugar Cookie Trees
• White Chocolate Cranberry-Orange Cookies
• Cinnamon-Spice Snowballs
• Quintuple-Chocolate Therapy Bars
• Chocolate-Dipped Gingersnap S’mores

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Amy Traverso

Amy Traverso is the senior food editor at Yankee and cohost of the public television series Weekends with Yankee, a coproduction with GBH. Previously, she was food editor at Boston magazine and an associate food editor at Sunset magazine. Her work has also been published in The Boston Globe, Saveur, and Travel & Leisure, and she has appeared on Hallmark Home & Family, The Martha Stewart Show, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Amy is the author of The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, which was a finalist for the Julia Child Award for best first-time author and won an IACP Cookbook Award in the “American” category.

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