My sister and I have a great tradition of getting together each year to make homemade holiday gifts. We started doing this back when we were in our 20’s as a way to give gifts to friends and neighbors without spending a fortune. You can imagine the stories we have to tell! The success stories are as epic as the fails, and there have certainly been many. Even so, as I look back, I am kind of impressed at our often times lofty ambitions. We have dabbled in caramel and candy making, fudge, almond Roca, and rugelach. We have even gone down the flavored salt road a few times.

Of course we’ve made our fair share of cookies, too. From chunky chocolate chip to crispy lemon wafers, to frosted gingerbread men…we’ve done it all. I’ve written about my sister’s mad baking skills before so you may have already figured out that I’m not the lead baker in our duo. I am typically the decision maker, however during actual cook time I am the happy assistant, largely just doing what I am told.

This year, we added a new baker to our group. Old enough now to want to help and excited to measure and pour, Norah happily donned her apron and joined in on the fun.

I have added Wild Blueberries to many a dish in the last year, but cookies I had not yet tried. This year, I decided to experiment with an all-time favorite of mine: the molasses cookie. I figured adding Wild Blueberries to an already soft cookie would make it even more moist and delicious. I was right!

These Molasses Cookies are spicy and delicious with a Wild Blueberry twist! The Wild Blueberries add a zesty flavor that complements the ginger and molasses just right.

Using frozen Wild Blueberries is really what made this recipe work. Adding them into the mix while still frozen prevented the already brown dough from turning purple, and enabled the berries to remain whole in the cookies, which was the exact result I was after. This way I get a whole Wild Blueberry with every bite.

Using Wild Blueberries in your holiday baking not only adds moisture to your cookie, it also adds a dose of heart healthy nutrients. Studies show that Wild Blueberries contain important nutrients that may help reduce chronic inflammation and improve cholesterol levels.

I really enjoyed adding Wild Blueberries to my favorite holiday cookie! Here are a few more ways to use Wild Blueberries in your own holiday baking:

• Replace half the sugar in a recipe with Wild Blueberries
• Replace Wild Blueberries for regular blueberries and get twice the antioxidant punch
• Replace the butter or oil in a recipe with pureed Wild Blueberries (this works best when you use half as much of the Wild Blueberry puree as the total amount of fat called in the recipe)
• Replace Wild Blueberries for canned fruit in a recipe
• Use pureed Wild Blueberries for syrup or glaze when topping cookies, pancakes, and other baked goods