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Try an Old Fashioned Cookie Exchange this Christmas Season

  • Susan
  • December 21, 2009
Plateful of Christmas Cookies
Plateful of Christmas Cookies

One of the traditional and more pleasurable activities of the Christmas season is baking cookies.  You can tell the holidays are coming when the supermarkets and mass merchandisers put large point-of-purchase displays in the front of the stores, containing every possible ingredient you might need to make cookies, cakes and desserts of all types.  If you’re like me, you’ll load up your shopping cart with pecans, walnuts, candied cherries, coconut and butterscotch chips, anxiously waiting for the weekend, when you’ll have some uninterrupted time to create your edible masterpieces.

What commonly happens, however, is that the uninterrupted time never comes, and the cookies never get baked ” at least not the way you imagined.

So how about a Cookie Exchange to the Rescue?

Let’s face it.  It’s time consuming and messy to make five or six different types of dough, get it formed into cookies, baked and decorated.  And it’s pretty certain that you’re not the only one of your friends in this predicament.  So an easy solution is to organize a cookie exchange with like-minded individuals who want a variety of cookies to share with their family and friends, but who don’t have the time to mess with several different recipes.

Almond Butter CookiesCookie exchanges are a great way to get together with friends and share your favorite cookies. It helps you accumulate different types of cookies without all of the effort.  Every invited person is charged with making just one recipe at home and bringing enough cookies to divide among the group so that everyone has at least one dozen of each cookie to take home.

Organizing the Exchange

Check to see how many of your friends would like to participate.  If you have seven friends plus yourself, that means there will be eight people dividing each batch of cookies.  Each of your friends will be asked to bake eight dozen of their favorite cookie recipe ” this is usually a double batch of dough.  You might also ask each person to bring 12 dozen (144) cookies, if you want everyone to go home with 1 ½  dozen.   In addition to making the predetermined number of cookies, each participant should bring copies of the recipe.  So not only does everyone go home with a batch of eight different types of cookies, they’ll have the recipe for the future.

The Day of the Exchange

A cookie exchange is really nothing more than an afternoon party, where the bakers get together to sample and exchange the goods.  Since this is all about the holidays, keep a festive atmosphere in your house.  Turn on the holiday music, light some scented candles and serve tea, coffee, hot chocolate or cider.  Have some healthy snacks, such as crudites and dip, tea sandwiches, or fruit and cheese bites.  Even though the gathering is all about the cookies, it’s good to have some healthier options to munch on as well.

The best way to facilitate the exchange is display everyone’s cookies on a table.  They should all be admired before they’re divided.  Everyone should bring a few large, containers in which he or she can collect their allotment of cookies.   At the end of the day, everyone goes home with dozens of homemade cookies for the holiday season; and all they had to do is bake one kind rather than getting your hands on cookie coupons and buy one.

There’s a  saying “many hands make light work”and this surely applies when it comes to a cookie exchange!

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