This 100-year old recipe comes from cookbook author Bonnie Stern's aunt Lil. Instead of a chocolate or jam filling, she used meringue, which becomes slightly chewy as it bakes. 

Arielle Nir Mamiye’s grandmother Esther was a talented cook and the keeper of the family recipes. One of Arielle’s favorites is for these crunchy Moroccan anise cookies that are best served with tea. 

Sweet and sticky dulce de leche is sandwiched between to layers of shortbread in this alfajores recipe. They are best enjoyed alongside coffee to balance the sweetness.

When food stylist Susan Spungen visited her Ukrainian grandmother Pearl in Philadelphia, she was often greeted with a plate of crisp poppy seed cookies. Our editorial director Devra Ferst has a soft spot for this recipe. She grew up with a very similar one in Philadelphia.

Friday afternoons in Sylvia Fallas's family are for coffee and sweets like these dainty date cookies at her grandmother Renee's house.

There are a couple of origin stories for black and white cookies, but according to the “Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets,” they descend from Hemstrought’s bakery in Utica, where they were called half moon cookies. Today, they are an essential part of Jewish New York. 

When pastry chef Caroline Schiff was little, she thought prune pastries "were for the old Yentas," she writes in her cookbook “Daily Dessert: Treats on Repeat.” But, she's come to love them and their nod to tradition.

This cookie recipe from Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, the duo behind London’s Honey & Co., brings together honey, dried apricots, and orange blossom water. They are naturally gluten free.

These delicate cookies filled with dates and walnuts come from Stella Hanan Cohen’s Sephardi community. You will need a cookie mold (which are readily available online) and a bit of time to make them, but the results are well worth it.

“I love how buttery and crumbly these are!” says former JFS culinary manager Chaya Rappoport. These crescent-shaped cookies were a favorite at the inn cookbook author Frances Largeman-Roth’s grandparents owned in Germany.

For many Jews, macaroons refer to coconut-based cookies for Passover. But, in Michel Thouati’s family, macaroons are almond cookies, scented with orange extract and zest, that are fit for the holiday or anytime.

With just a handful of ingredients, these walnut cookies are far more than the sum of their parts. They are wonderfully roasty and nutty. The recipe comes from Ruth Stulman who serves them at Mimouna, a Moroccan celebration to mark the end of Passover.

In Jennifer Indig’s family, her grandmothers’ cookies area always around: thin mandlebread from grandma Mitzi and shortbread cookies topped with caramel, nuts, and chocolate, or turtle cookies, from grandma Syl.

These Iraqi cookies are made with almond flour and egg whites, which lend them a chewy texture, while rosewater offers a floral note. 

Holocaust survivor Alta Blima Hartstein used to make kindl for holidays and big family gatherings. The dough is made with red wine, seltzer, and yeast and the cookies have a sweet, chewy walnut filling.

Cookbook author Jake Cohen’s great-great-aunt Lotte always arrived at holiday meals with a Tupperware of her famed meringue cookies studded with chocolate chips and walnuts.

In Ayelet Izraeli’s Iraqi family, these cookies are made for Purim celebrations. But, with only three ingredients, you can even make them at the end of a busy work day.

When Emily Velelli’s family threw her a 100th birthday party, they sent guests home with small bags of these classic Greek butter cookies with the recipe attached, to make sure it wouldn’t disappear.

The recipe for these iconic Sephardi cookies has traveled with Debby Kaplan Pearlman’s family from Greece where they lived before World War II, to what was Belgian Congo (present day Democratic Republic of the Congo), and to the U.S. Serve them with coffee. 

These pistachio cookies tinged with rosewater are part of Ruth Stulman’s Mimouna celebrations, a North African custom to mark the end of Passover. But they are an excellent gluten-free choice anytime of year.

Mandel bread are typically baked twice like they are in this recipe from Jennifer Indig's grandmother Mitzi. She studded her mandel bread with pecans and sliced them thin, producing an elegant, crispy cookie.

Filling hamantaschen with dulce de leche helps Mia Zimman connect the threads of her daughter’s heritage. “She’s Latina, Jewish, American — she’s got so many cultural identities. It just feels really good to put together a few different pieces into one,” Mia says. 

Knead Love Bakery’s Sarah Magid grew up baking hamantaschen with her mother Ruby and grandma Eva. Today, Sarah makes a gluten-free version of the cookie at her bakery around Purim.

“There’s no Yom Kippur without boulou — that’s for sure,” filmmaker Audrey Garcia explains. Flavored with orange blossom water, the dessert is traditionally enjoyed by Tunisian and Libyan Jews, but is little known outside of those communities.

Studded with lots and lots of raisins and walnuts, these cookies are for people who sit squarely in the more is more camp.

Any filling you like will work with this hamantaschen recipe, but marzipan, which you can buy in a block, or a simple homemade lemon curd are particularly nice. 

These simple oatmeal cookies can be made with or without walnuts and are finished with a cross hatch pattern.

When Ayelet Izraeli's family lived in Baghdad, preparations for Purim stared weeks before the holiday. Cousins gathered to make treats like date filled b’ebe b’tamer, savory cheese sambusak, coconut cookies, and these ring shaped cookies.