Do you have a Christmas cookie making tradition? A recipe you can’t live without? While we have favorite cookie recipes throughout the year, we do not usually do the traditional cookie baking day at Christmastime. This year however, our friend Lisa got inspired to make cookies and invited us along to make a day of it. What we thought might take a few hours ended up as a full day of flour, butter and sugar…lots of sugar! We made 8 kinds of cookies covering all shapes and sizes; some traditional, some experiments and some personal favorites. We think we ended up with about 450 cookies! We kept making plates for people and it didn’t seem to make a dent. We divied up the stash and will be sharing some with friends and family and some with some US Marines who are looking out for us this holiday season. After we finished, we took some notes for next year over a glass of wine and decided we are on a cookie baking break. I have to say, this is a great way to spend a day getting into the holiday spirit with some good friends. Stay tuned for our favorite recipes this week!
While we each had some people who were interested in joining our extravaganza, we decided to try it out before including others in our craziness. We cook together a lot and managed to find a good rhythm and system. If you find yourself making LOTS of cookies, here are some things that helped:
- Gathered all of our combined baking supplies and laid them out to survey and plan
- Made a photo copy of each recipe (this is a REALLY good idea to simplify)
- Pulled out butter out to soften ahead of time
- Laid out the mise en place for each recipe individually, putting each on a sheet pan for easy transport
- Created separate work spaces for separate tasks
- Each found a task that suited us and worked on multiple recipes
- We were lucky to have two ovens and several kitchen timers
- We all pitched in on the clean up!
P.S. We all knew in advance that clean up help is a given in our group, but if it isn’t in yours, our suggestion is to confirm that part of the deal in advance. It is not so bad if you all pitch in!
P.P.S. Check out our photo montage below! Thanks to Lisa for hosting and for the photography!!
Kelly & Mary
