How do you know your annual cookie contest has become wildly popular? When the prizewinning recipe leads to key ingredient shortages across the Twin Cities.

That’s what happened in 2014 when the victorious recipe calling for 2-1/4 cups of almond flour won the Star Tribune’s cookie contest. Two days later, heading to a holiday party and knowing full well he’d better show up with the winning cookies, food writer—and later the newspaper’s restaurant critic—Rick Nelson set out to buy his own almond flour. And came up empty.

The Wedge Co-op, Lund’s, and Cub Foods—all were sold out of the specialty flour. When Nelson explained to a tired grocer why he needed the ingredient, the grocer replied, “Oh, so that’s why we just had to order 45 pallets of almond flour!”

You can find that recipe for Italian Almond Cookies—along with 99 other cookie contest winners—in the newly published The Ultimate Minnesota Cookie Book (University of Minnesota Press, 2024) by longtime Star Tribune Taste editor Lee Svitak Dean (M.A. ’79) and Nelson (B.A. ’82, M.B.A. ’86). A first version of the book, called The Great Minnesota Cookie Book, was published in 2018.

Another metro-wide nut sensation took place five years earlier, when the winning recipe was Almond Triangles. Producing five dozen of these delectable buttery treats requires a full pound of sliced almonds. “Because almonds are expensive, I suggested that readers check out a St. Paul specialty store called We Are Nuts,” says Nelson, who happens to call that city home. “When I dropped into the store to pick up my own almonds, it was mobbed,” he recalls.

“When I finally grabbed two bags of slivered almonds, I realized that every person in front of me in line was buying the same thing. The store owner was handing customers our winning recipe from the newspaper. I was so charmed by that I told him I wrote the article.” At which point the owner “brought his wife out from the back and she said, ‘We’re going to send our kid to college on this story!’”

Dramatic runs on ingredients aren’t the only proof of the contest’s popularity. The newspaper had 200 entrants its very first year in 2003, says Dean, and has never had fewer than that in any year, reaching as many as 400 recipes at times.

Early on, contest wranglers Dean and Nelson, both now retired from the Star Tribune, agreed on certain judging parameters: no recipes featured in the paper before, and none that called for shortening, breakfast cereal, or vanilla pudding mix. “I believe that cookies are at their best when they’re made with whole—and wholesome—foods, and when it comes to butter, nothing is better for flavor, texture and color,” says Nelson.

The two also carefully chose recipes that were practical for home bakers: not too elaborate and using only readily available ingredients. “I learned this lesson from [veteran Minnesota food writer] Beatrice Ojakangas,” says Dean. “She told me she only created recipes with ingredients she could buy at her local supermarket”—and this was 40 years ago in Duluth.

Each year’s batch of winners, made up of one grand prize and four finalists, includes at least one recipe a novice could handle, and which look beautiful on a plate together, and don’t all contain chocolate. But why five annual winners? Because that’s how many recipes and photos fit into the newspaper’s double spread.

Both authors come by their cookie obsession honestly. Nelson is the grandson of the late Hedvig Nelson, a daughter of Swedish immigrant farmers. She arrived at the Nelsons’ suburban Twin Cities home annually before Christmas to bake, bake, and bake some more. “She’d fill our ancient garage fridge with the most beautiful cookies and breads,” says Nelson. “Those are my happiest kitchen memories.”

Dean’s Norwegian father was adopted by a Czech family. Her mother’s surname, like her coauthor’s, was Nelson. Just like at Rick Nelson’s house, the biggest baking time of year for the Svitaks was the holiday season, when her Norwegian mother and grandmother joined forces to prepare that old country trio: krumkake, rosettes, and sandbakkels. The authors’ family favorites, along with the stories behind them, make up the final section of their revised book.

But how to manage all that contest baking without a flock of Scandinavian matriarchs? Nelson and Dean started the contest—which they initially considered a “one-off”—by doing most of the baking themselves, narrowing down their favorites to 20 finalists. Later, to avoid massive holiday fatigue, they enlisted willing coworkers to help. But because the skills of their fellow reporters and editors were varied, so too were the results.

Therefore, 12 years into the contest, Nelson and Dean enlisted baking students at a nearby culinary school, whose results were more predictable. Those students, along with Star Tribune staff, helped judge the contests.

Picking each year’s winners was always the job of Nelson and Dean—a good team, really, because Nelson loves chocolate and sweet treats, while Dean prefers her cookies a bit more on the savory side.

Although Dean retired from the Star Tribune in 2020 and Nelson in 2022, they still follow the annual cookie contest with great interest. Because despite new staff and a sweeping newspaper redesign, the competition they started 21 years ago is still going strong.

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