It's Cookie Making Day! My absolutely favorite holiday tradition every year is cookie making day. It's the one day of the year that we spend a good portion of the day together as a family making something and sharing with others. I love seeing how everyone works together and all the happiness in the house. It could be the sugar, I'm fine with that, I just love the togetherness. It's also important to me to show my kids how to take time to do things for others. We make the cookies to give away to neighbors, friends, teachers… and we all pitch in with ideas of who we are giving the treats too. This year we invited my parents to join us as we had a fantastic time!
Yes, that's my mom trying to bite my son's hand… no, I have no idea what that's about – usually she's trying to stick a cupcake in someone's face, this is new.
Sometimes I join in and make cookies, this year I was more of a director. Everyone paired up with someone else and we had multiple cookie batches going all at once. We have a couple go-to favorite cookies we like to make year after year but I also like to throw in some new recipes and see what we think. The key is to pick recipes the entire family can help with. Complicated or long drawn out processes don't do well with my family. They would get bored with the waiting and eat all the raw dough. I have nothing against raw dough consumption, it just makes it really hard to give the neighbors a plate of treats when all you have left are the crumbs and some pitiful broken candy canes.
Family Cookie Making we made this year…
I do not have the recipes for all of these cookies shared yet. But, as I add recipes, I'll update the list here too.
Magic Cookie Bars are my husband's all time favorite. They are super easy to make, just layer on ingredients and then bake. The kids love 'em and we rarely see another cookie plate that includes them. It's nice to have a unique goodie to share! Here's the Magic Cookie Bar recipe.
We didn't have enough chocolate chips for our usual fudge recipe, but I had a bag of white chocolate chips on hand, so we mixed the batch. White chocolate chips don't melt quite the same, but I like how the fudge turned out. Its a yummy creamy milk chocolate with chunks of white chocolate mixed in. Nice surprise there! Here you can read the full Easy Fudge recipe.
The kids had a school fundraiser this year selling boxes cookie dough, so we used that for some of the basics. There were 5 flavors, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, oatmeal cranberry white chocolate chunk, chocolate (see that M&M yumminess above?) and snicker doodle. Using these ready-to-bake cookies was a brilliant idea! It gave us more time to focus on making the cookies we love the most from scratch.
We also like to cover things in chocolate. The favorite, and definitely the easiest is pretzels. Tell me these don't look delicious…
We also used vanilla almond bark with pretzels… scrumptious!
As cookie come out of the oven, I move them to the dining room table to cool. We usually end up with 10 or so plates full of all kinds of cookies. I can't help myself, I LOVE cookie making day!
Everyone got a little tired by the afternoon, so we waiting to decorate the sugar cookies. My boys were over the whole family time in the kitchen thing, so it was just me, hubs and my daughter frosting and sprinkling holiday cheer. This year I added a can of frosting to make it easier to add some fancy decorating to the cookies. I highly recommend it, we had a lot of fun without trying to use a real frosting bag.
Now for MORE fun cookie making day ideas!
I've asked other creative bloggers to share their favorite easy to make treat and cookie recipes and this is what they shared:
- Four Ingredient Devil's Food Cake Christmas Cookies from Bombshell Bling
- Simple Homemade Marshmallows from Balancing Beauty and Belam
- Chocolate Holiday Pretzel Sticks from Cooking on the Front Burners
- Peppermint Bark from A Cedar Spoon
- Winnie the Pooh Hunny Pops from Carolyn's Homework
- Peppermint White Chocolate Cheesecake Rice Crispy Treats from 365 Days of Crafts
- Peppermint Marshmallow Creme Topped Brownies from Laura Kelly Designs
- Homemade Ranch Seasoning Mix from Snappy Gourmet
- Turtle Pretzel Bites from Yummy Healthy Easy
- Gingerbread Brownies from The First Year Blog
- Peppermint Marshmallow Fudge from Just Us Four
- Apple Cinnamon Pancake mix and Gift Jar from The Country Chic Cottage
- Chocolate Peppermint Cookies from Miss Information
- White Chocolate Gingerbread Blondies from Bless This Mess
- Brown Sugar Sticky Bun Popcorn from Simply Southern Baking
- Cranberry Bliss Cookies from Rhubarb and Honey
- White Chocolate Cranberry Pecan Bars from Barbara Bakes
I really love seeing all these different cookie recipes. If I could, I'd spend my time making and tasting new cookies every day. I love sharing the cookies we make with our friends and neighbors – the time we spend making these yummy treats is just a little gift to give back for all the happiness they share with us throughout the year.
Do you have a favorite cookie day recipe you love?
That looks like so much fun! What a great tradition, thanks so much for including my cookies in your list!
Thank you for including http://www.365daysofcrafts.com