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Daily Dish

L.A. Times Holiday Cookie Bake-Off, Round 2: Tasting our way through the top 50

By Betty HallockDeputy Food Editor 
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Norwegian crowns, bourbon balls, ‘never say oops’ lemon cookies, Grandma’s carrot cookies, peppermint pinwheels -- these were among the 50 kinds of cookies that Food section staff members and chefs from the Pasadena Cordon Bleu cooking school taste-tested Saturday to determine the top 10 cookies in the first-ever L.A. Times Holiday Cookie Bake-Off. (Hey, somebody had to do it.)

The top 50 cookies from more than 350 submissions were determined by readers’ votes Nov. 15. The job of narrowing the competition down to 10 wasn’t easy -- the 50 kinds of cookies covered five dining tables.

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Six judges, including Food section editor Russ Parsons and test kitchen manager Noelle Carter, assessed each cookie’s texture, flavor, richness, appearance and holiday spirit. It took nearly two hours to taste and tally -- any longer, and the judges wouldn’t have finished before succumbing to a collective sugar overdose.

The top 10 cookies were the clear finalists (no tie-breaker taste-testing required), and these will be announced Monday. Hopefully, we will have fully recovered from sugar-induced catatonia by then.

-- Betty Hallock

Daily Dish
Betty Hallock

Betty Hallock is deputy Food editor at the Los Angeles Times. She has co-written four cookbooks, including “Bäco: Vivid Recipes from the Heart of Los Angeles,” “Amá: A Modern Tex-Mex Kitchen” and “Baking at République.” She started her journalism career at the Wall Street Journal and Scientific American in New York, worked on the L.A. Times’ Business desk, and was interim food editor at Los Angeles Magazine. Hallock also helped launch a food and nutrition vertical for wellness app RoundGlass. She’s a graduate of UCLA and New York University.

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