21 Best Cookie Recipes for Back to School Lunches and Snacks (2024)

Updated August 23, 2022

• Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

  

  Baking, for many of us, starts and ends with chocolate chip cookies. These have a delightfully chewy texture thanks to a secret ingredient: milk powder. (CH)

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• Brown Sugar Snickerdoodle Cookies

  

  These cinnamon-dusted cookies are a great balance of soft and crispy, and they come together quickly. (CH)

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• Peanut Butter Cookies

  

  There is something so satisfying about making peanut butter cookies. Maybe it’s those little cross-hatch marks you make with a fork. Maybe it’s the intense peanut flavor. Maybe it’s the nostalgia. This hits the mark. (CH)

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• Cinnamon Snap Cookies

  

  I like cookies you can dunk in coffee. Or tea. These are those cookies. They’re snappy, spicy, and sweetened with honey. (CH)

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  Continue to 5 of 21 below.

• Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

  

  Rather than semi-sweet chips, this recipe uses milk chocolate. Rather than softened butter, this recipe uses browned butter. The adaptations make for a decadent, sophisticated cookie experience. (CH)

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• Pumpkin Cookies

  

  These soft and moist cookies manage to put almost everything delicious about fall right into one cookie: cinnamon, cardamom, pumpkin, rolled oats, and pumpkin puree. (CH)

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• S'mores Cookies

  

  Bet you didn’t know you could bake cookies with marshmallows in them! Summer may be a memory, but you can conjure up a campfire treat with these s’mores cookies. (CH)

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• Giant Ginger Cookies

  

  Along with the edict that there’s no such thing as too many chocolate chip cookies, I also firmly believe there’s no such thing as too many ginger-spicy cookies. These giant 4-inch cookies are deliciously gingery. (CH)
  

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  Continue to 9 of 21 below.

• Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

  

  Here comes that browned butter again—along with pecan, oats, and shredded coconut for additional texture and flavor. (CH)

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• Butterscotch Cookies

  

  Ok, we are guilty of a recurring theme here—browned butter. It really makes a big difference in these butterscotch cookies. They only look like they have molasses in them—but don’t! (CH)

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• Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies

  

  Chocolate is such a great backdrop for the spices and molasses of gingerbread, as it rounds out the flavor and adds a depth and you didn’t know gingerbread needed, or could take. (CH)

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• Maple Cookies

  

  It’s all about the maple syrup—grade B, specifically, which is richer in taste—in these soft and chewy cookies. (CH)

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  Continue to 13 of 21 below.

• Gluten-Free Monster Cookie Bars

  

  Full of oats, peanut butter, M&Ms, and chocolate chips, these monster cookie bars made on a sheet pan give you an entire batch of cookies, in bar form, quickly. Line the pan with parchment paper for ease of lifting and super easy cleanup. (RS)

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• Lime Icebox Cookies

  

  The great thing about these cookies, besides that they are irresistibly both sweet and tart, is that you store the dough in the refrigerator for up to 1 week and slice and bake as desired. Freshly baked, crisp and buttery cookies anytime you want! (RS)

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• No Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

  

  Oh, this could be so dangerous! A cookie you can throw together and just refrigerate. No baking needed. Which means you can have these at your fingertips lickety-split. It’s the little things, right? (CH)

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• Nut-Free "Peanut Butter" Chocolate Chip Cookies

  

  Nut-free, egg-free, and gluten-free, these cookies aren't any more difficult to make than peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. They just have different ingredients and cater to different diets. Sunflower butter takes the place of peanut butter in these vegan cookies. (RS)

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  Continue to 17 of 21 below.

• Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

  

  Oatmeal. Raisins. These cookies are practically breakfast! (Don't quote us on that.) Soft and chewy in the center and crispy on the edges, bite into one of these classic cookies and you'll think you're at Grandma's house. (RS)

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• Simple Soft Sugar Cookies

  

  So simple to make, simple is in their name. For a tiny little extra effort, you can add sprinkles or frosting, but that's not necessary for kids (and adults) to love them. (RS)

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• Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

  

  The beauty of any cookie bar recipe is that it takes much less time to make an entire pan of bars than it does individual drop cookies. These chewy, buttery, chocolatey cookie bars can satisfy your chocolate chip cookie craving quickly! (RS)

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• Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

  

  Gluten-free and dairy-free, these cookies contain just peanut butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate chips, baking powder, and salt. They're so simple because all the ingredients go into one bowl, and they're mixed together using just a fork. (RS)

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  Continue to 21 of 21 below.

• Banana Cookies

  

  Banana bread is not the only way to use up overripe bananas. These cookies are a good use for them, too. They're a little bit like muffin tops, soft and full of tons of flavor from cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, plus some crunch from pecans. (RS)

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