Sure, chocolate is nice and sugar cookies are classics, but there’s something about the spicy aroma of ginger wafting through a kitchen that screams “Christmas” to Beth Biundo, a New Orleans–based travel agent and former professional pastry chef. “I’m actually not much of a chocolate person, but when I open a bag of crystalized ginger to make cookies, the rest of the bag is just gone immediately,” she says.
After studying at the French Culinary Institute in New York City, Biundo returned to her hometown of New Orleans in 2004, working at the Magazine Street mainstay Lilette (and garnering four James Beard semifinalist nods for “Outstanding Pastry Chef”) for a decade before running the beloved Uptown bakery Beth Biundo Sweets. There, she churned out wedding cakes, tarts, and holiday cookies by the box. “I always loved to make a cookie and ice cream plate when I worked at restaurants, and we always had cookies in stock at the bakery,” she says.
Though she shuttered the shop in 2023 to pursue a career as a travel agent, she can’t escape the draw of the kitchen. (Lately she’s found herself swapping secrets with pastry chefs at African safari camps and checking out new recipes at sweets shops in New York.) On her Substack, she shares recipes from her bakery and beyond, scaled down for the home cook, including her holiday standout three-ginger cookies. An enlivened take on a ginger snap, Biundo incorporated—as the name implies—three different types of ginger for the perfect balance of zest and comfort.
“Each ginger does something different,” Biundo says. “The dried ginger is that traditional flavor you know from a ginger snap. The candied ginger provides chew. And the fresh ginger just has this freshness that adds another layer to the flavor.”
