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Congratulations to our 2008 winners! Here are the winning entries for you to enjoy this holiday season.
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Frances Van Vynckt, 78, has always loved to enter contests of any kind. In 1981, her recipe for Rafiq’s Oven Fried Chicken won the grand prize in a Chicagoland cooking contest. It was always hard to find time for baking while raising her six children. This was her favorite cookie to make as a special treat for her “little angels” because it was so easy and fast.
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Winner of our online Readers' Choice contest. After trying for years to create a low-fat chocolate cookie, 45-year-old strategy and operations director Josh Gitlin discovered the perfect formula: “Eliminate additional oil or butter, add antioxidant-rich chocolate and pecans.” We found that Dutch-process cocoa yields an airier cookie, while regular unsweetened cocoa gives a flatter but equally delicious result.
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Cynthia Farr-Weinfeld, a hypnotherapist and writer, started improving the nutritional profile of a friend’s mother’s ginger cookie recipe by substituting whole-wheat pastry flour for all-purpose flour and canola oil for shortening. “Experiment with these cookies,” she advises, “as they taste great either slightly underdone or crispy.” She calls them “the quickest cookies you’ll ever bake.”
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Registered Dietitian Mary LaRock loves to experiment with food. Her winning recipe not only tastes delicious with the orange and dark chocolate combination, its “interesting shape is a nice contrast to round cookies on a holiday cookie plate.”
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Master of Fine Arts student Allyson Lea Smith consulted with her mother and baked at least six variations to create this healthier version of a family favorite. Oat-chocolate sandwich cookies have always been a part of her family’s “famous holiday cookie trays and gift bags.” She substituted canola oil for some of the butter, added heart-healthy almonds and used dark instead of milk chocolate.
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A retired writing professor and mother of two daughters, Jessie Grearson now spends most of her time on creative pursuits. She loves gardening, quilting and, of course, cooking. She learned to cook by watching her mother and has also been lucky enough to receive Indian cooking lessons from her Indian mother-in-law. A pineapple-coconut bar that her mother used to make inspired these cookies. Her version successfully uses whole-wheat pastry flour and less butter and sugar.
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