The Best Back-To-School Gift for Teachers? A Tin Full of Delicious Cookies

It’s never a bad idea to attempt to curry favor with teachers at the beginning of each new school year. The most enduring image of this—and the origin of the phrase “apple-polisher”—is that of the fawning student dutifully polishing an apple before placing it onto a teacher’s desk. (Fun fact: this tradition dates back to frontier times when students and their families were expected to provide their teachers with ample sustenance to survive.)

Apples are fine, but you know what’s better? Cookies. Our new cookbook, The Perfect Cookie, is a love letter to cookies that contains 250 foolproof recipes. (We’ve also got plenty more cookie recipes on our website.) So instead of an apple, we think you should give your teacher a tin of one of these three delicious cookies (or a tin containing a mix of all three) when you head back to school this year.

Some of the best desserts feature coffee—think coffee ice cream and tiramisù. Coffee is also frequently paired with chocolate for a mocha flavor, but we've never seen it take a starring role in a cookie recipe. We wanted the coffee flavor in our cookies to be front and center, so we started with the strong stuff: espresso. These coffee toffee cookies make a tasty accompaniment to any teacher’s morning coffee.

Hailing from Italy's Piedmont region, baci di dama have a darling name (they translate to “lady's kisses”) and an even more darling appearance. The sandwiches consist of two diminutive hazelnut cookies surrounding a rich chocolate filling. Baci di dama are a textural marvel, at once crisp and meltingly tender. We’re not saying giving teachers a tin of these adorable little cookies will guarantee an A+ at the end of the semester, but it certainly won’t hurt.

Filling cookies with jam is always a hit, but sometimes we tire of the classic butter cookie sandwiching any jam of the red variety. Searching for new inspiration, we decided to flavor the dough with vanilla and fill the cookies with often overlooked apricot preserves. Teachers will love the flavor of these vanilla bean-apricot sandwiches, and they’ll also applaud you (maybe in the form of high marks) for your creativity.

What do you plan to drop on your teacher’s desk this semester? Let us know in the comments. For more information about the book, go here. And go here for more free recipes from The Perfect Cookie.