A Christmas Cookie Party

Most everyone who celebrates Christmas also takes part in the simple joy of making Christmas cookies. There is something very satisfactory about rolling out a lump of cookie dough and pressing in cookie cutters of all shapes and sizes. The aroma of the baking cookies fills the kitchen as more cookies are cut and once they’re all baked to that perfect golden hue, the real fun of frosting them arrives. What can make this holiday tradition even more fun, however, is turning the event into a whole cookie-baking party.

Assuming you get along well with your extended family, invite everyone to take part in a fun night of cookie baking and decorating. Make several batches of cookie dough a few days ahead of the party and keep them in the freezer. On the day of the cookie party, pull them out a few hours before the cookie makers arrive. If you don’t have a large table, spread the cookie cutters, rolling pins and frosting containers out on several tables to ensure there is plenty for all. And if someone runs out of something, the cookie supplies can easily be passed back and forth between tables. Waxed paper taped to the tables and sprinkled with a little bit of flour will protect the tables and make a good dough-rolling surface.

Have one person in charge of the oven who can collect the cookie trays filled with cutouts and bake them. It will keep everything flowing smoothly. Also don’t limit your party to just sugar cookies. With so many people, everyone might have different tastes. Ginger snaps make excellent cutouts, especially when smeared with vanilla frosting, and there are many chocolate cookie recipes that lend themselves well to becoming Christmas cookies.

And most important of all, don’t forget to have fun! There are no rules when it comes to cookie making, they can be as traditional or as crazy as you like, and in my family we’ve found that when the cousins get together, the cookies usually end up pretty crazy. This year we created a batman cookie out of an angel whose head ended up with pointed ears in the oven. And out of the last bits of dough, we fashioned the dark mark from Harry Potter, which ended up being frosted with an appropriately eerie shade of green. (Don’t ask us what that had to do with Christmas, because we don’t know, we just know it was fun!)