Our winner this week is Helena Georgette Mann, who sent a recipe using two ingredients that I love, but wouldn't have thought of combining -- maple and coconut.

Here's Helena's recipe ~

This cookie recipe comes from my mother. It is a tradition to have cookies with hot chocolate after decorating the Christmas tree. This is one of the three cookies we have. It's a dense cookie with the essence of maple, texture & taste of coconut & the sweetness of sugar. It's a delicious cookie!

RAGGEDY ANNE COOKIES

Ingredients

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup shortening

1 large egg

1 teaspoon maple flavoring

2 1/4 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups shredded coconut

granulated sugar

Directions

Beat together brown sugar, shortening, egg & maple flavoring until fluffy. Add flour, baking powder & salt; mix well. Stir in coconut. Drop by spoonfuls, 2 inches apart on greased cookie sheet. Grease bottom of glass with shortening & dip in granulated sugar. Press cookies flat with glass. Reapply shortening to glass as needed & dip in sugar. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. Remove from cookie sheet to cooling rack.

Krista's take ~

On our difficulty scale of one to three, Raggedy Anne Cookies came in at less than a Nina Reid Norwood (a one). Anyone with a mixer and an oven can whip these cookies up. In fact, I think it took me twenty-five minutes from the time I pulled out the mixer to the time I pulled the first tray of baked cookies from the oven. These are great last minute cookies for those times when you need cookies fast.

The recipe says to drop by spoonfuls, but my dough was fairly thick, so I used my fingers to plop small rounded amounts onto the baking sheet.

I had to look for a glass with a flat bottom. Who knew so many of my glasses had concave bottoms? Greasing the glass, dipping it in sugar and flattening the cookies would be a wonderful job for little helpers. Don't twist when removing the glass, though, that makes it stick. Just lift straight up.

I thought the coconut might give these cookies a fuzzy look, sticking out at the edges, but it blended in very well. You can see a few of the slightly bigger pieces in the pictures.

The smell is heavenly! I found maple extract without any problem at all at my natural foods store. If you're a fan of maple, these are the cookies for you. They're also a great choice if you're making a lot of different kinds of cookies because they're not similar to anything else.

Thanks for sending me your recipe, Helena! Your tree trimming tradition is lovely and must be a lot of fun for the whole family.