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Everyone bakes a large batch of cookies
to bring, and at the Swap party, you trade off batches of cookies, with
a few eaten along the way. In the end, everyone goes home with a
variety of holiday cookies, probably doubling the amount
they brought. A tradition to continue ... |
We all tend to start the holiday baking season with good
intentions: clipping recipes, flipping through cookbooks and magazines, talking
to friends about how to make the Holidays meorable.
But then the holiday craziness begins, and plans for baking heaps
of beautiful cookies evaporate as the reality of shopping, cleaning, and
entertaining sets in. Unless you've got super-powers (or you started in
October), it feels like there's no way to have heaps of homemade cookies for the
holidays.
What you need is a Cookie Swap. All you need are a few
cookie-loving friends and a place to gather. You're going to have to bake a
little, but only the one or two batches you would have gotten around to
eventually, anyway. Invite five or ten of your closest personal friends to your
house (or convince one of those friends to invite the rest of you) and lay down
the ground rules.
Preparing for a
Cookie Swap is a lot more fun than spending hours It's a good
excuse to get together with friends during this busy holiday time, and it's
a low stress way to entertain for the host.
Remember, it's great to take home all those cookies, but most of the fun is
in getting together with friends. Here are some things to keep in mind:
• Plan early and don't let your party be ruined by last-minute
cancellations--everyone gets busy around the holidays. Well in advance, set
a date for the cookie exchange and send invitations to as many people as you
can comfortably accommodate.
• Decide in advance how many of each type of cookies everyone is going home
with. Tell each person you invite to bring at least three dozen special
cookies of one kind, and to bring along an empty container that will hold
the just desserts of the cookie exchange. (Hard-core cookie collectors bring
lots of little plastic bags to separate cookie varieties so that the flavors
won’t mingle, and tuck crumbled waxed paper into the interstices of the box
so that delicate cookies won’t be crushed.)
• Keep a master list of cookies so everyone doesn't bring the same thing.
There's no point in holding a Cookie Swap if you all bake sugar cookies.
• If you're the host, plan how cookies are to be swapped. For example, each
guest could bring portions already packaged, or guests could swap from tin
to tin, or you could provide zipper-lock bags so each guest can select a
portion and pack them up. Another way is to pass around one tray of cookies
at a time as its baker describes the contents, where she got the recipe, and
any pitfalls she might have encountered.
• Remind guests that it's okay if they don't have time to bake dozens
of cookies. A tasty cookie from a bakery can be a nice addition to the
homemade ones--or it might be easier for everyone involved to bake a couple
of trays of bars and cut those into cookie-sized portions.
• At my cookie parties, I like to serve sandwiches that
are cut in four triangles and nicely placed on a platter. I also have drinks
and a few salty snacks, but mostly your guests will probably want to eat
cookies. Some hosts keep a cookie exchange notebook to record that year’s
guest list, what was served at the buffet, and what kinds of cookies were
swapped. |
| I like to do
activities during the party. Everyone can chat and have something to do.
Here are some ideas:
+ Get
glass cookie jars and have everyone decorate their own at the party (go to a
crafts store). Then do the cookie exchange so you each have something to
carry your cookies in.
+ I also
like to have everyone send me their cookie recipe in advance. At the end of
the party I give out a Cookie Recipe Book with all of them bound together.
+
Sometimes we exchange only certain types of cookies -- such as rolled and
cut out cookies using cookie cutters. Not only did we exchange cut-out
cookies we brought, but we exchanged cookie cutters
+ One
year we exchanged cookie dough in a tub with a recipe. You have to be
careful with keeping it chilled during the ride to the party, during and
afterwards. When my guests arrived, I had a chest with ice in it to keep the
dough chilled--everyone had a chance, with eyes shut, to reach in and pick
one (We refrigerated it after the exchange and took it out right before the
owner went home).
+ I once
had a cookie decorating party, plus everyone
exchanged cookies that they brought. I prebaked large cut-out cookies (or
you can get or order them already made from the grocery store's bakery) and
had everyone decorate them. We used the decorating pens filled with icing
from the supermarket, plus sprinkles, etc. and had a contest for the best
one. The prize was an easy to understand book called,
Cookie Decorating: Delicious Decorating for Any
Occasion, by Toba Garrett. I have taken
decorating classes from her at Peter Kump's, NYC, and her designs are just
divine.
+ If your
party is close to Christmas or any holiday, make the cookies with a hole on
top so it can be hung from a Christmas tree or a small metal ornament stand
(Pier 1 has them -- you hang ornaments on a metal tree). Once I purchased a
small tree and we decorated it with the cookies and donated it to a local
Children's Hospital. |
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