| Welcome to the Cookie Challenge newsletter! Every Wednesday until December 24 we share cookie news and a delicious cookie recipe. Weekly prizes too, along with a grand prize: a Staub cast iron Dutch Oven. |
 Adding some chocolate and using fresh ginger brings these cookies into a different dimension. Our web guy’s favourite cookie. Adapted from a recipe by the fabulous Anna Olson.  |
 Hit the Share this Cookie button to invite your fellow cookie fanatics to the Cookie Challenge. Every friend you invite is an extra entry for prizes.  Ginger’s association with Christmas is a European invention. The Dutch, English and Germans were using ginger in cookies, both in a crisp style (gingersnaps) and a softer, cakey style (lebkuchen). The molasses connection came along when early American and Canadian settlers discovered that molasses from the Caribbean was much cheaper and easier to procure than refined sugar. Who did what and when after that is lost to history, but I bet most people remember some form of ginger cookie (aka gingerbread men) during their childhood holidays. “My kids were little and I needed an outlet, so I started baking cookies,” says Kathy Leskow, owner of Sherwood Park’s Confetti Sweets. That was in 2008. Since then Kathy has taken Confetti Sweets to the Oscars, twice, and a generation of cookie lovers dream of getting one of those adorable packages of cookies. What’s the best part? “The best part is seeing customers who have been with us since the beginning and the staff,” says Kathy. “It’s so neat to see my cookie makers grow up. So many started with us when they were in high school and now I go to their weddings. I’m the cookie grandma.”  Click the cookie to get your very own holiday  |
