20 Classic Cookie Recipes Just Like Your Grandmother Used to Bake
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe: Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
As if warm chocolate chip cookies couldn't get any better, this recipe swoops in with a next-level ingredient: browned butter. It'll stand out in a bake sale full of chocolate chip-studded cookies.
Kitchen Sink Cookies
Recipe: Kitchen Sink Cookies
This recipe is a more exciting version of basic chocolate chip cookies. As the name suggests, you can just throw in everything but the kitchen sink. (May we suggest: oats, crushed corn chips, chocolate chunks, and almonds.)
Easy Sugar Cookies
Recipe: Easy Sugar Cookies
Because grandma knows how to create a little magic in the kitchen, and—for a kid—colorful cookies that you can frost yourself are just that. Make this recipe as your base, then decorate away for any occasion.
Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies
Recipe: Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies
We always had the honor of pressing the chocolate kisses into these bite-sized beauties while cooking at grandma's.
Cheesecake Cookies
Recipe: Cheesecake Cookies
These maraschino cherry-topped cookies should look mighty familiar. This recipe is a longtime holiday crowd-pleaser.
Easiest Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe
Recipe: Easiest Peanut Butter Cookies
Memaw's peanut butter cookies are legendary. Little did we know, you only need four ingredients to make a huge batch of perfection.
Red Velvet Cake Mix Cookies
Recipe: Red Velvet Cake Mix Cookies
This is grandma's version of making lemonade out of lemons—but the lemon is boxed cake mix, which isn't too bad to start. She knows just how to create chewy cookies from her emergency red velvet mix.
Pinwheel Cookies
Recipe: Pinwheel Cookies
This vintage recipe gives basic butter cookies a fun chocolatey twist. It makes a classic cookie festive for the holidays.
Barbara Bush's Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe: Barbara Bush's Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies
What's special about these "famous" chocolate chip cookies? The secret lies in the recipe. A Texan at heart, Barbara knows to go big or go home. Any Southern grandma appreciates that cookie mentality.
Fudgy Flourless Chocolate-Pecan Cookies
Recipe: Fudgy Flourless Chocolate-Pecan Cookies
Because leaving out the flour only makes room for more chocolate. We can get on board.
Cream Cheese Christmas Cookie
Recipe: Cream Cheese Christmas Cookie
This recipe is an all-time Southern classic. Make them year-round by switching up the sprinkle colors.
Seven-Layer Cookies
Recipe: Seven-Layer Cookies
This is the first-ever bar cookie recipe ever featured in Southern Living. A favorite of Southern cooks, it's easy to make and easy to take.
Toasted Oatmeal Cookies
Recipe: Toasted Oatmeal Cookies
Here's one of Grandma's ultimate cookie tricks: Toasting the oatmeal. It instantly makes classic oatmeal cookies so much better.
Old Fashioned Tea Cake
Recipe: Old Fashioned Tea Cake
This recipe is one your grandmother may have pulled from her own childhood memories. A teacake—basically a crossover between a cookie and a biscuit—is a simple and inexpensive treat made of flour, sugar, butter, and the main ingredient: buttermilk. Flavor yours with lemon, cinnamon, or vanilla.
Grandma's Chocolate Drop Cookies
Recipe: Grandma's Chocolate Drop Cookies
Chocolate lover's, this one is for you. No matter your skills in the kitchen, we feel confident that you can whip up this classic chocolate cookie straight from your grandma's recipe box. Feel free to put your own twist on the chocolate base by adding nuts or mint chips—you never know, you may perfect your own recipe to pass down to future generations.
Cherry Winks
Recipe: Cherry Winks
This recipe became a nationwide sensation in the 1950s, and what better time to time to bring it back?! It's made with a deliciously crispy exterior of cornflakes and a perfectly sweet interior thank to maraschino cherries—a forever childhood favorite.
Brown Butter Snickerdoodles
Recipe: Brown Butter Snickerdoodles
Sugar cookies, step aside. These cinnamon sugar treats with a secret ingredient (spoiler: brown-butter!) hit the spot every time.
Lemon Thumbprint Cookies
Recipe: Lemon Thumbprint Cookies
A favorite at Christmas time, thumbprint cookies bring on all the nostalgia of baking parties and holiday cookie swaps. Even today, this is not surprising because what's not to love about a bite-size dollop that's buttery and sweet?!
Salted Butter-Pecan Shortbread Cookies
Recipe: Salted Butter-Pecan Shortbread Cookies
Shortbread cookies were a staple at Grandma's house, and for good reason. As a Southerner, it's our duty to pass this nostalgic treat of butter, salt, and pecans, onto the next generation.
When it comes to baking, a Southern grandmother is the queen in a cloud of flour. Many of us can recall a childhood speckled with grandma's cookies of all kinds, from classic chocolate chip to royally iced sugar (and every recipe in between). We'll be darned if we ever tasted a cookie as good as one of hers, and we'd never admit it if we did. Because, no matter how masterful, they can never truly measure up to her magic. Southerners are a loyal bunch, and we'll be true on this until the end: "Ain't no cookie like my grandmother's cookie."
We've rounded up a collection of 20 classic Memaw-approved cookie recipes that'll give you a taste of nostalgia—and a hankering for a warm cookie. These are Grandma's specialty, after all, and they're worth keeping around for decades to come.