Twenty years of contest-winning cookie recipes have been gathered into one cookbook, “The Ultimate Minnesota Cookie Book.”

Lee Svitak Dean and Rick Nelson were involved with the Star Tribune’s Holiday Cookie Contest for years.

“We really wanted to wrap up those two decades with a new edition has a lot of extra recipes, photographs, and also a section of personal essays and recipes from us as individuals, as authors,” Svitak Dean said.

Submissions came from people around the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

“We have 100 recipes from readers all over Minnesota. Not just the Twin Cities but some from Duluth even and the Iron Range and from northern Minnesota,” Nelson said. “To me, that really speaks to the interest in baking across the state, that so many people from all over Minnesota are really into baking. And it’s reflected in these recipes.”

Each recipe has been tested and tried several times.

“We did a lot of baking every year because we’re journalists, and we wanted to make sure No. 1 that these recipes worked because we knew that thousands and thousands of people were going to be baking them,” Nelson said. “So Lee and I would bake them a number of times before they got into the newspaper, just to make sure that everything worked.”

It also proves that you don’t have to be a professional baker to make great cookies.

“Baking cookies is really this sort of gateway into being in the kitchen,” Svitak Dean said. “It just encourages people to learn their way around the kitchen and … cookies are pretty sturdy for whatever skills you have. So we highly recommend it as a starting point.”

“The Ultimate Minnesota Cookie Book” is for sale online.