Fifty recipes, every one of them photographed and tested to the point where the dough behaves the way the page says it will. That reliability is the entire reason a cookie book earns a place in a December kitchen, where there is no time to debug a recipe.

Icebox pinwheels, red and white meringue kisses, apple cider caramels, giant molasses spice cookies, hazelnut sandwich cookies. Alongside them are dozens of decorating and packaging ideas, which is the part most cookie books skip and the part you need when the tin has to travel to a neighbour, an office or a cookie exchange.

It is a compact hardcover at a gift price, and it is the rare seasonal book that gets pulled off the shelf every single year.