Disappointment

My cake was dry :( So sad.

When your feet are the size of the Easter bunny's...

We eventually plan to celebrate the bunnies & candy side of Easter, but at this point The Cupcake has no use for an Easter basket and neither of her parents needed another excuse to down a pound of chocolate, so we basically just skipped it. Luckily my mother (GrammyCupcake) put on a lovely Easter dinner and invited me and TC over to share in the feast (the hubby had baseball tix).

I'm still not great at getting out of the house with my little one, I tend to agonize over getting everything packed and ready so that I'm exhausted before I even leave, but the sleep situation has been getting better and better, and I found myself awake on Easter morning while The Cupcake was doing this:

(My Little Snugabunny Swing by Fisher Price, I <3 You!)

So I walked into my kitchen and whipped up these:



jumbo chocolate dipped strawberries, and two of these:



Vanilla cakes that I smushed the frosting of, but they still tasted okay. Neither of these creations was very exciting on their own, but when you realize that they signify MY FIRST BAKING WHATSOEVER since the baby bomb dropped on our lives, I'm pretty darned impressed! I think this may have been the first time the oven has been on in 4 months. It was exciting.

And then I somehow even managed to clean myself up a tiny bit, and wrestle TC into a pretty little dress so we looked presentable for about 10 minutes:



And then the puking started, so we were right back to the dirty stinky mess our lives usually are. And then I broke my toe on GrammyCupcake's beautiful but deadly antique sofa, so that kinda sucked too. But at least we had HAM! :)

The Perfect Brownie

Have you seen this infomercial?



I was gifted two of these pans for my birthday the past couple years (thanks!), and I finally tried them out over Easter. They were really cool!

First off, they're actually "brownie pan" sized, which means you don't have to combine two mixes to fill one out like a normal cake pan. You assemble the pan, pour in the mix, and set the grate in place before you bake. That gave me the opportunity to add walnuts to some, and leave others plain - even in the same batch. When they first came out, I was worried it didn't look like the grate had stayed in:



But it did, and they came out perfectly! I tend to underbake my brownies just a touch so they are really moist, which makes them a disaster to cut, but these were both moist and perfect little pieces. My family definitely enjoyed them at Easter dinner!



"The Perfect Brownie" pan = high marks! I'll definitely use this again.

Bakerella, you evil temptress...

How dare you introduce me to sites like Bake It Pretty. That spells trouble with a capital $.

I'm drooling a little bit...

Single Serving Cheesecakes

I was charged with bringing a dessert to the in-laws' on Xmas day. I went with a slight twist on an old standby - cheesecake! This time I used the single serving "ready crusts", which come in packages of six. I made a double batch of my classic cheesecake recipe, which is SUPER easy and makes a dense, creamy cheesecake.


Double batch:
4 pkgs of cream cheese
1 1/3 cups sugar
4 eggs
4 teaspoons vanilla
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Beat the cream cheese till fluffy (room temperature cream cheese works best). Add sugar, vanilla, and lemon juice, beat until smooth. Add eggs one at a time until well mixed and creamy. Lumps will taste sour (in my opinion - I don't like cream cheese solo) so make sure it's smooth. I used a 1/4 cup scoop to fill each cup with slightly less than that - be sure to leave room for the cheesecake to rise while it cooks, or you'll have a mess.

I baked them at 350 for 15-20 minutes, until set. That's fairly arbitrary, but they puff up and get sort of solid when they are done, and then fall a little when they cool. Over cooking results in cracking, but you can cover that up with toppings pretty easy :) Voila! I think they look really pretty all cooling on the stove.

The double batch made 24 individual cheesecakes AND one slightly over-full "regular size" cheesecake.

I plan to top them with strawberries in heavy syrup, but prefer to wait to add the toppings until they are served. They'd look more sophisticated with thin slices of fresh strawberries, or a few fresh raspberries, but I really like the sugary syrup taste :)

Williams Sonoma Pie Crust Punches

I got these adorable little pie crust cutters from Williams Sonoma as a hostess gift on cookie exchange night. How cute are they? They're little spring-loaded cookie cutters that allow you to punch out designs, or use the punched pieces.





I think they're like a tool & a toy in one :) The reviews on the Williams Sonoma site are OUTSTANDING - they're getting 4.9 out of 5 stars, and that is with over 8 pages of reviews! Sadly, they are no longer available, so you'll have to look through ebay or some other route to acquire them.




I've never yet attempted a pie, but I'm really looking forward to using these little guys! I'm actually thinking about trying one for Christmas, where I'm charged with bringing desserts. I'm thinking for my first attempt I'll cheat slightly and use frozen crust (also known as: good time management :) but if I dress it up with these little cuties, nobody will care!

2nd Annual Cookie Exchange - YUM!

This post should have been up yesterday, but Blogspot thwarted my actions. Or maybe my Internet connection did. Regardless, I apologize. I had a WONDERFUL evening surrounded by friends, family, and COOKIES!

The 2nd annual cookie exchange was a big hit! I'm rolling in cookie ecstasy this morning, and I'm pretty sure my husband will gain 12 lbs this week. I had to fight him off to get some photos before he dug into all the goodies.

We had 13 participants, and agreed to make 1/2 dozen for each guest. Last year we did a full dozen and somewhere around the 8th batch my head started spinning like the exorcist, so I knew we had to scale back this time around. :) In preparation for the exchange party, I picked up 13 big cardboard Cub Foods boxes (just $1.09 each!) and labeled them with each participants name.



This keeps everything running smoothly - people bring their batch of cookies however works best (some had bags, some boxes, some even Rubbermaid tubs!), and when they arrive they deliver one package to every carton except their own. Sort of reverse trick-or-treat. Last year I used Costco bags, but they didn't have any in stock this season, and actually the Cub boxes probably offered a little more protection. Cookies were to be packaged in containers that the baker does not need back, like the 3/$1 foil tins I scooped up at Dollar Tree. But boy were my friends creative! These white chocolate cranberry cookies were in holiday goodie bags:



These plastic containers holding butterscotch coconut cookies are actually take out containers from our favorite Chinese restaurant, eNoodle Cafe:



These cute gift bags held chocolate mint cookies, and the recipe was rolled up with a chocolate mint candy cane:


One guest gave me a special hostess gift, putting her Russian Tea Cakes in a cute ceramic jar:


And speaking of cute, OMG are these not the most adorable sugar cookies ever?!?!? This is from the same creative mind that brought you the True Blood Cupcakes, and Alice in the House Halloween costume:

Love them!!! My mom emailed me late that night after opening all her cookies and said "they're like mini works of art!" I wish I had that skill with royal icing, mine always look like I used a trowel.

There were lots more AMAZING treats as well, from dipped cherry cookies to lime coolers, traditional gingersnaps and peanut butter blossoms (my absolute favorites), melt-in-your-mouth sugar cookies, chocolate raspberry bars, and even divinity! I'm so impressed with this bunch of ladies, and we had a great night sipping wine and cocoa, catching up, and trying to keep cookies away from Norm (not all of that was successful).



My favorite moment of the whole evening was when I oh-so-gracefully spun around and knocked someone's plate out of their hand, sending food flying everywhere, and reacted with cat-like reflexes to catch most of the food in my hand. That food was salsa. Have you ever tried to catch salsa? I laughed for an hour on that one.

Overall it was a great night, the cookies are spectacular, and I'm starting to feel like it's the holidays now :) Thanks to everyone who participated, and Happy Holidays to all!

Teaser for my Cookie Exchangers...

Recipes to come later in the week, but I thought I'd give a sneak peek of what I spent the weekend doing - and let you all know that I recovered from my bakeFAIL on Saturday. For the exchange we're all just bringing 12 packs of 1/2 dozen each, all one variety - but since it's my exchange I try to do a little extra. Last year I did a lot of chocolate dipped goodies for everyone, but since pretty much everyone got them just a few months ago in the Halloween Goodie baskets, I decided to try some new recipes. My husband has pronounced all of these "AMAZING" so I'm feeling pretty good:

Apricot Cream Cheese Drops:

Chocolate Cappuccino Cookies:

Soft Lemonade Cookies:

Cookie Fail

Last year I crossed off bucket list item #36 , be part of a cookie exchange for the holidays. I accomplished it by starting my own group exchange with a combination of family and friends, and it was a big hit! So this year I'm doing it again by popular demand - and with even more participants. The exchange is Wednesday, so I've been grocery shopping twice and spent this evening trying out my recipes.

It was huge disaster.

It started out easy enough, I (thought) I had all my ingredients, my recipes, my tools...


Recipe #1: Apricot Creams.

First I did the classic baking powder/baking soda mix up. Had to scoop it out and start over, while hubby ran to the store for the other. D'oh.

Then I didn't do a very good job making my "rounded teaspoon" sized balls - the recipe that was supposed to make 6 dozen cookies only made about 3.

And then 1/2 of those burned, four minutes before they were even supposed to be done, as I hadn't realized the racks were moved so low in the oven (Thanksgiving). Double d'oh.



That was all the first recipe. The 2nd recipe - soft lemonade cookies went slightly better. I kept the soda/powder straight, and fixed the racks in the oven, but still made the drop cookies too big so they're not that pretty. But they do taste pretty good.



I think I'll take a tip from my mother and try to find some small ice cream scoops tomorrow, and use them to make more perfect and consistent batter drops. Something like this from Target would be good:


So for tonight I've thrown in the towel - I'm still eating the ugly cookies, but I want to be sure I make the prettiest most perfect ones for my exchange, so hopefully tomorrow will go better.

Monday: Craftily Conquered Quite Fully

I've probably mentioned before that I go to bed early. Like GRANDMA early. I haven't always been like this, but sometime after college my internal clock did a total re-set and now I'm generally snoozing before the news. So nights like tonight when I stay up crafting until 11:30 are fairly rare. That said, I've got not other choice than to stretch my days right now and get as much done as I can!

First, I stopped at Costco to pick up the prints I ordered. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH! I'll admit, when I first got our previews I wasn't blown away, but the more I look at these the happier I am. I took them right home and switched them into my large collage frame that sits on the mantle. It's hard to get a good photo of because of the glare off the glass, but suffice to say I am VERY happy. The red & green go perfect with our living room accents, and I think we look adorable and loving in all of the photos. Can I get an "Awwwww!" ?

Also at Costco, I scooped up one of these:

Yup, couldn't resist. My husband called it "cheating," I call it "outsourcing" - this gorgeous pumpkin cheesecake was only $14, I couldn't pass it up. Now I have one less major task to worry about this week, and more time to allocate to everything else! Thanks for all the good recipes, I promise to try them when I have more time and less panic :)

Next I spent a couple hours re-arranging the furniture to fit two banquet tables into our living room, and digging out china and serving pieces for the big meal. I like to get it all ready and set aside early to minimize scrambling when the stress is already out of control. Though, since Hubby is cooking this year, I get to sit downstairs and watch TV, right? :)


I still need to find out where the tablecloths are hiding, but this is my china pattern - "Treetops" by Mikasa. I inherited it from my grandmother, and it's full service for 12, and even has the gravy boat. Very important for occasions which actually involve gravy, such as this week :) Martha would be so proud. I love that I can intermingle green and white serving pieces and it still looks cohesive and classy - plus I'm a sucker for green.

Once most of the Thanksgiving prep was squared away, I headed up to "the witch's tower" and packed away most of the Halloween tubs so I had room to finish up mosaics. This was slightly complicated because I stole one of my craft room tables for Thanksgiving, so there's a bit more mess to maneuver around, but luckily it's all MY mess and I'm okay with it :) My glue still hasn't arrived (d'oh!) so I busied myself polishing, pricing, and bubble wrapping finished frames. Oh man is this a lot of work! I think I only got 10 or so packed up, and have twice that many left. Thank goodness for the short work week!

Help! I Need a Pumpkin Cheesecake Recipe!

I've been charged with creating a dessert for Thanksgiving this year, and I'm not quite sure what to do. After Halloween I'm a little sick of all the chocolate for a while, I don't have pie pans and have never baked a pie, and cupcakes just seem too sweet after a big rich meal. I know I can make a cheesecake fairly easily, so I started poking around the web for a more unique yet still easy variety, but I'm just not finding what I want. Anyone have an easy pumpkin cheesecake recipe, where I can use Keebler ready-made crusts? I don't have spring form pans, so I can't do anything New York style that really rises. Ideas?

Another big night!

Wednesday was my last full day of work before the big day, (today is 1/2 day and then coaching) and sounds like the last dry day as well - right now it's POURING! Because of this I shuffled my plans a bit - I finished painting the base of the archway, but didn't deal with attaching the sides, since I'm scaling back to a more temporary and less weather-resistant model. I'd rather not be stuck parking outside for the rest of the week, so I'm waiting to put the rest together till Friday or even Saturday instead of putting it together and taking up my whole parking spot :)

But I still made a full evening of it!

I mixed, rolled, cut out, and baked FOUR batches of The Queen's Tarts, which are now ready to put together today or tomorrow. They'll get raspberry or apricot fillings. The process actually went really quickly, even with my ancient mixer. I was pretty proud of two things, first - this is all the dough I threw out:



Nice, right? Every last scrap I re-rolled an cut until I was down to just the tiniest part.

Then, after baking, I was pretty thrilled to find I only broke 3 cookies! That doesn't sound that impressive, but these suckers are fragile. I'll probably lose a couple more when I'm filling them, but so far I'm ahead of last time. Here are the casualties:



I wrapped all the baking up just before 9, and assumed I was headed off to bed (yes, I'm old, I usually crash BEFORE the news even). But then I had an inkling to put together a few goodie boxes, and ended up cranking out nearly 1/2 of them!



I love how they look, and boy are they packed with goodies :) I'm so happy everything fit! The box was the perfect size for all the goodies I wanted to include:



I'm not posting my next to-do list because it's 3 pages long + growing :-O Suffice it to say, I will be running around like the proverbial chicken sans head for the next couple of days, and will likely not get to everything. This will annoy me, but you will probably not notice until I decide I just have to tell you - I've been down this road before :)

Anyways, I'm probably going to be short(er) or updates for the next 48 hours or so, but after Halloween I promise lots of photos & tutorials on every aspect of how I "made" my Wicked Wonderland party 2009 :)

Tuesday's Accomplishments:

Well, I mostly kept up my crafty domination yesterday, though hubby and I took a break for burgers and milkshakes, which I really needed. I accomplished all of the tasks I had blocked out on my list for the evening, which is good, though I just didn't quite feel like everything came together the way I wanted it to. I have some perfectionistic tendencies (no, really?) so it's hard for me to scale back or settle, but with just 3 days to go now, that's going to have to be good enough.

I don't have photos, because I'm not ready to expose all these things yet, but here's what I accomplished:

-more spraypainting on the "looking glass" archway
-added text to the upper curve of the archway, outlined in glow-in-the-dark paint
-hung my "Cheshire Cat" stripes & words in the basement
-hung 3 sets of purple lights in the Cheshire Cat area
-washed a load of blankets (I'm anticipating a few overnight guests, so we're shoring up all our resources)
-painted a bunch of little wooden signs with a base coat of white
-went to Michaels, forgot the one thing I went there for but got a few other supplies
-ate a banana-fudge milkshake and bacon cheeseburger
-went to bed early

I could have accomplished more if I had more energy, but I'm still on track - and I actually feel pretty good this morning! I made it out of the house early, stopped at a gas station for Vitaminwater & a lotto ticket (I can dream) and still got to work on time.

Up tonight:
-final coat of spraypaint (hopefully)on archway - attach header & the foil curtain "mirror" center, sides - and DONE (hopefully)
-bake the Queen's Stolen Tarts

Since the cookies involve mixing, rolling, cutting, and baking, I'll be happy just to get that part done this evening. It's hard to judge how long a "normal" sized batch will take, since the only other time I baked them I did more than 12 dozen :) I'll wait to stack & fill them until I'm sure they're completely cool, maybe tomorrow. Which will be Thursday. Which is only 2 days before Halloween. EEK!

Oh my aching...everything...

Today I have a baking hangover - sore shoulders, back, and feet from standing at the stove for hours on end, and I forgot to put my wedding ring back on after mixing the peanut butter balls (it's a hands-on job). I'm also pretty tired blended with pretty panicked, so there's a strange bi-polar element to everything I'm doing. Will I get everything done I wanted to before the party? No. I know that. I never do. I get some crazy ideas and end up running out of time/money/energy and something has to give. Rarely would guests notice, but I always feel a little defeated.

So this year I've started earlier than ever before, and hopefully that counts for something. So far my outdoor plans haven't been working out, but inside the house is more than 1/2 decorated. The living room, dining room, hallway and kitchen are done, the bar area is 75% finished, and I just have the bathrooms & TV area to decorate still. Then this week is all about cooking, cleaning, and hiding junk in closets :) One of the best parts about Halloween? Nobody can judge you on your cobwebs - I'll claim I put them out just for the festivities :)

Next up on my list is to pick up more chocolate and crank out the dipped pretzel rods for the goodie boxes, and finish the candy chess pieces. Since the pretzels are the largest, they have to go into the boxes first - the sooner I finish all that, the sooner I can tie all the bows and add the final embellishments to the packages. They're going to look something like this on the outside.

I have a feeling this week will just FLY by...

Sneak Peek: Stolen Tarts - With Recipe!

How lovely are these?!?!? This is how JoyofBaking.com dresses up their linzer-style shortbreads - with raspberry and white chocolate. It was this recipe I altered last December for my cookie exchange contribution. Remember these gorgeous stained-glass looking beauties:



They were time consuming, but a HUGE hit - and I think I can handle it again provided I'm not making 12 DOZEN this time :) So, these are what I'm planning to make for part of my Halloween spread - the Queen of Heart's stolen tarts!

I know these are not tarts. But seriously, when you think of the nursery rhyme, do you really picture a tart? Tarts are kind of annoying, they aren't stackable, they fall apart when you bite into them...These seem much more appropriate. Here's the recipe, based on JoyofBaking's but co-opted with my own commentary as necessary:

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup salted butter, room temperature
(they listed the recipe as unsalted butter + 1/4 tsp of salt...but of course I had salted butter, so I used that and omitted the salt and they were just great - so I'd save the step).
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Jam for filling

To make: In one bowl whisk the flour with the salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of your electric mixer (who loves their kitchen aid? Mine is harvest gold and from 1963, but I'm in LOVE! Or you can also mix with a hand mixer, if you're more patient), cream the butter until smooth - about 1 minute. Add the sugar and beat until smooth - about 2 minutes. Beat in the vanilla extract. Gently stir in the flour mixture just until incorporated. Flatten the dough into a disk shape, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill the dough for at least an hour. Don't skip this, or the dough will be sticky and too hard to work with.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees with the rack in the middle of the oven. Line baking sheets with parchment paper - if you haven't used parchment paper before, it's awesome - saves you a lot of scrubbing, especially of you are making a ton of cookies and have to re-use cookie sheets over and over. LIFESAVER!

On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough until it is about 1/4 inch or 1 cm thick. Using a 2 to 3 inch cookie cutter (I used stars for Christmas, will use hearts for Halloween) cut out the dough. Place the cookies about 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheets. Use a smaller cookie cutter to cut out the centers of HALF of the cookies on the baking sheet. You will be sandwiching two cookies together and there will be a small 'window or cut out' in the top cookie so you can see the jam underneath. Don't make the top cookie with the cut out too thin by using a big cut out, or it'll break too easily. Mine were borderline - I might go with a smaller cut out this time. Place the unbaked cookies on the baking sheet, in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes. This will firm up the dough so the cookies will maintain their shape when baked. I actually followed this, and yeah, it worked. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until cookies are lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack.

Make more than you think you want - these suckers are fragile, and you have a lot of handling to do.

JoyofBaking has a fancy schmancy recipe for filling, but I just used organic jam and it got great reviews. I chose based on what colors looked prettiest, as I am want to do - and ended up with apricot and raspberry. For Halloween I'll probably stick with raspberry and maybe a blueberry or blackberry for a black looking heart.

You can figure out the sandwiching, right? Full cookie, pretty side up - then slap on some jam, then carefully set the cookie with the cut out on top. Poof! You'll want to steal these pretty "tarts" too :)

Mini Bread Bowl Bake Off

I wasn't kidding when I said I was on a roll today! In addition to the projects I've posted so far, I also spent the morning experimenting with how to make mini bread bowls.

For my Halloween menu I'm in love with the idea of tiny foods. Remember when Alice is trying to get through that first door and keeps growing and shrinking with the magic "drink me" potion? I think that gives me perfect license to play with proportions, and besides, mini foods are delightful. I'm going to use the font I talked about yesterday to make little signs saying "One side makes you tall and one side makes you small..."

So one of my mini food ideas I'm set on is mini bread bowls with spinach dip. I think this would be a great savory appetizer, and last year I noticed people gravitated much more towards the "food" than "sweets", so I'm trying to take that into account (even though I prefer MAKING sweets).


So, today's mission: Figure out how to make mini bread bowls! I knew it wouldn't be worth it to make bread from scratch (not my forte) so I picked up a cannister of Pillsbury bread sticks and tried a couple different methods.


Round one: I cut each of the dough strips in half, wrapped them around my finger, and pinched the bottom closed to form a little bowl.

I started with 6 of them, baked for 8 minutes at 375. They came out super cute!

Some of them started to peel away at the ends a little, but the ones I was careful to really smush together were almost perfect!

...but I still wanted to try a few other ways.

For round 2 I wrapped a whole bread stick up like a cinnamon roll, and then smooshed the middle, like the pinch pots you made in kindergarten art class.


They came out pretty cute too! Little round balls - though about twice the size of the first round, since I used a whole breadstick for each one.


For Round 3 I wanted to try using mini muffin pans, but mine is mysteriously MIA, so I tried a regular muffin tin instead. Again I took a whole breadstick and wound it around the muffin cup, and smushed down the bottom a little. I didn't worry too muc about covering the bottoms because of how much the breadsticks puff up, I figured they'd be covered...and I was right.

At first I thought they were stuck to the bottom of the pan, but with just a little prodding they came up and actually look better on the bottoms than the ones baked on a sheet. The shape was sort of cup like, but not very deep. My least favorite.

But before I could decide, I had to fill them all! For rounds 1 & 2 I cut out a little wedge with a knife, and for all 3 I scooped in some store-bought spinach dip (Cub Deli - it's decent). I think I might consider piping it in with a large frosting tip, since it was kind of hard to make look cute, but otherwise, I'm pleased!

I'm running one more "test" to make sure they'll work - letting them sit out for a while, like they would for a party. I want to make sure they don't melt or ooze or fall apart somehow. But saving a catastrophe, I think I'm going with method #1! That's on the far left in the last photo. They were the perfect 2-bite size, and using 1/2 a breadstick means I can get 24 per can - that means around $0.10 for each bread bowl.

There's a huge test project DONE! WHOO HOO! 6 weeks!

Holiday Cookie Exchange

I'm a little late for Christmas in July, but it occurred to me in going through my bucket list post that there are a couple things I've checked off but not featured on my blog. One was #36, be part of a cookie exchange for the holidays.

I think I first heard about this idea from my friend Al, whose family does one yearly and always sounded like great fun. I love to bake, though I'm not very adventurous and for some reason don't know how to bake most of my holiday favorites. A cookie exchange was the perfect solution - everyone can make their specialty, and leaves with a huge assortment!

I've apparently developed this motto in life, "if at first you don't get invited, then it's time to host your own!" This is certainly how I ended up hosting the big Halloween bash (years of scrambling for something fun, it finally became clear I needed to make my own fun!). Sometimes it gets annoying (doesn't anyone want to invite me to a New Year's Eve party, so I don't have to cook and clean on my birthday?) but usually it's a fun experience. It definitely was with the cookie exchange.

I started a few months before the holidays sending out emails to people I thought might be interested, and how I thought it should work. I asked everyone who wanted to participate to send me 2-3 types of cookies they'd like to make, and I'd choose the option that best fit the group in terms of avoiding repeats, etc. I ended up with a lot of interest - ELEVEN people!

I picked the date that worked for most of the group and was about a week before the holidays - this meant people would have their cookies for entertaining on Christmas and the week before. In retrospect, we might move it a little earlier next year, as more people wanted them for entertaining and the parties were generally in the week before that. But all groups will differ.

Everyone was asked to bring 10 dozen cookies (1 dozen for every guest other than themselves) packaged by the dozen in containers they didn't need back (i.e. saran wrap, pie tins, gladware). This didn't sound outrageous to me because I grew up with a mom whose basic recipes were all set for 12 dozen, but if that is more than you can handle you could always limit the number of guests, or bake only 1/2 dozen for each person. I also asked that every participant share their recipe, so we could each build a treasury of our favorites for future entertaining. For those who couldn't make it that evening, I asked that they send their cookies ahead of time, and they could pick up their assortment at the end of the evening or next day.

I got everyone a huge re-usable bag from Costco to take home all of their goodies, and even then they were very full bags! These are great if you haven't tried them - they come in a 3-pack for under $3, have two sets of handles, and are super durable. I use them all the time and I think we have about a dozen floating around out home & cars.
I tagged each bag with a name and set them up on two tables, so as guests arrived they could distribute their goodies into everyone's bags. Boy did it smell GREAT! We each introduced our cookie to the group, drank wine & cocoa, and enjoyed a few snacks and the festive mood. I was excited to show off my decorations for my first Christmas in our new home, and this was such a great opportunity!

As organizer of the exchange, I kept my cookie flavors a secret, and also made a few extra treats for everyone.

The cookies were linzer-style shortbreads, and it was my first time ever making them! This was quite an ambitious undertaking, not only are you making 10 dozen cookies (+ a dozen for yourself) but since they are a sandwich cookie you are really making twice that! I spent an entire day working on these, but they were worth it. There is a shortbread cookie on the bottom, raspberry or apricot filling, and a "window" shortbread cookie on top. I think they look like stained glass and are really beautiful.

And since I cherish my title as "hostess with the mostess", here are the extra treats I threw in for everyone:

Neapolitan cupcakes - two each of chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla

Carrot Cake bites with cream cheese frosting and slivered almonds

S'mores on a stick, peanut butter balls, and dipped pretzel rods.

I probably won't be making quite as many side treats next year (sorry ladies!) but I've heard from several of the participants that they'd love to do it again, and a few who missed out were quite jealous! If you want to go all out, you can read this lady's guide on her crazy cookie exchange (it's apparently a competitive event!)For resources on recipes and ideas for cookies to try, I recommend Joy of Baking which is where I got my amazing peanut butter ball (AKA "Buckeyes") recipe.

We each went home with 10 dozen cookies + all the extra treats, more than enough to share at the office, relatives, and even re-gift. With so many different varieties, even if you didn't like one kind there were still plenty of other options. I know since I have very limited food likes, my husband certainly appreciated having goodies around I wouldn't normally bake.