How to Host a Successful Christmas Cookie Exchange

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is coming up next week! This year will mark the 10th Annual Christmas Cookie Exchange that I will be hosting at my house! It’s a day for us ladies to get together over tea or wine and have appies and catch up, all while trading our new or favorite holiday cookie recipes!!

If you have never been a part of a Christmas Cookie Exchange, let me tell you how it works!! It’s surprisingly easy and a LOT of fun!! Basically, each person who attends the party brings six dozen of their favorite type of cookie, then we make the exchange and everyone brings six dozen different cookies home!!

Ten years ago when I hosted my first cookie exchange, I wasn’t really sure how it worked, so I googled, and found this page . This site gave me a very specific set of rules that, for the first couple of years I was very specific about following… and honestly some of the rules were a little too much for me, so I have relaxed them into the rules below and things have gone much more smoothly ever since!

Recipe for these beauties

Before the rules, a few tips to make your life easier as the hostess of the cookie party!! First of all, give LOTS of notice! I usually send out my invitations (usually as a facebook event) about a month or so before the party. People have very busy social calendars, and if they know about this event well enough ahead, they can also plan to make time for the baking part of the party!! Although some people get stressed about having to bake 6 dozen cookies, remember: that usually just means two batches of a single recipe, since most cookie recipes make 3 dozen cookies!!

Second: Don’t stress!! This is supposed to be a fun event!! I usually have my Christmas tree up mid-November, so my Christmas décor is the only decorating I do for the party, well aside from the beautiful cookies all my friends bring along!! I buy or make a few easy appetizers, open a few bottles of wine and make a pot of tea and we just sit and chat and catch up with each other!

If you have the time, ask your friends to provide you their recipes ahead of time and put together a Cookie Book. It sounds like a lot of work, but it’s super easy and your friends will thank you! When I hosted my first cookie exchange, I asked people to bring copies of their recipes, so if someone LOVED a cookie, they’d be able to bake it! Inevitably, people would forget, so I try to collect everyone’s recipe the week before and print them all off into a little booklet for my guests to bring home! Voila, ten minutes of copying and pasting into a Word document and all of our new favorite recipes in one place to share!!

Finally, I know that people are busy, but busy people still want cookies!! I allow people to bake their cookies and drop them off to me before the party and I will do the exchanging part for them. Last year I had one participant in labour, and another working and one more that had a different party to attend… but they all wanted to bake and exchange cookies, so they brought them over before the party, prepackaged and ready to go and I exchanged their yummies for them! One last thing that may make your life as Cookie Party hostess a little better… and by no means is this necessary, it’s just my OCD coming out to play… if you have an odd number of participants, and you won’t be able to evenly divide cookies (for example 11 people x 6 dozen (72) cookies = 6.54 of each recipe per participant) whip up an extra batch of cookies.

See how amazing having twelve different types of cookies can be????

As the hostess, you are likely already a baker and have a ton of recipes in your arsenal. In addition to making it easier to divide and package cookies (especially when many of the guests pre-package their cookies), if you bring two entries to the party, you LEAVE with double the cookies!!

So, without further ado, and using guidance from Robin’s Rules to Hosting a Cookie Exchange, here are my…

1. All cookies should be homemade, baked and main ingredient must be a type of flour. This means your guests will bring COOKIES. Not Rice Krispie treats, not meringues, COOKIES. After all, this is a Cookie Exchange!!

2. No plain chocolate chip cookies, cookie mixes, no-bakes, meringues or bars. Anyone can open a package and add an egg, this party is for cookies made with love. We allowed bars one year, and they didn’t cut well, they weren’t evenly sized, and they didn’t package and stack like cookies.

3. Please bring 6 dozen total cookies… well maybe a couple extra to share… but really, six dozen cookies. One recipe baked twice, 72 cookies. It makes it easier for sorting and separating when the actual exchange part of the party, and means that no one is shorted cookies because someone only managed to bake 60 cookies.

4. Email a copy of your recipe before the party (or bring recipe to the party). In addition to putting together a Cookie Book like I do, having everyone provide their planned recipes in advance means that you won’t get duplicates. Not that having four kinds of shortbread is the worst problem to have, but variety is the spice of life!!

5. If you don't have time to bake, or have burnt your cookies, but still want to attend, you must go to a real bakery and buy 6 dozen yummy cookies. This one is pretty self-explanatory! In all of my years, it’s only happened on time that someone had to bring bakery cookies!!

I am so so so looking forward to this year’s festivities!! This year’s Cookie Book already has recipes for Oreo Peppermint Crunch Cookies and Salted Caramel Stuffed Snickerdoodles. I. Can’t. Wait!!!!!! Thanks for stopping by today! I really appreciate it!!

The Dunbar - Chocolate, caramel, pecan and oat bar

Hello my friends!! Today I have a super amazing, ridiculously easy and crazy delicious recipe to share with you! About a year ago I was home in the afternoon and caught an episode of Steven and Chris. For those of you who don't watch, Steven and Chris is a Canadian talk show that focuses on lifestyle, home decor and cooking. It's quite entertaining and the hosts always make me laugh.

On the particular day that I was watching, the hosts had a baker on the show who has a downtown Vancouver bakery called Butter Baked Goods and she was making a glorious looking recipe called the Dunbar. It was a combination of cookie, chocolate, caramel and deliciousness. I was running out the door as the recipe was being presented, so I pvr'd the episode and finally watched it months later.

Fast forward to May and our social committee at work was having a bake off. Participants were asked to bring 100 mini servings of a baked item and they would be served and judged by the people who came to try the baked goods. I can't remember how I placed at the bake off, but my Dunbar's were all gone and I had a ton of people asking me to share the recipe.

The best part about this recipe (I think) is that instead of needing heavy cream and melting caramels, I was able to use a jar of caramel sauce! I found the one I used at Target for only $3.99. The original recipe calls for dulce de leche, but this sauce does the same thing and the recipe turned out fantastic!

I finally made these again over Christmas for a friend's pajama party and actually remembered to take photos so I could share them with all of you!! I hope you enjoy these as much as I did!!

The Dunbar 
Original Recipe from Butter Baked Goods

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 1/4 large-flake rolled oats
3/4 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup pecans, lightly chopped
3/4 cup caramel sauce or dulce de leche

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 9x9 square pan with parchment paper. Trust me, don't skip this step, or you will never get your delicious treat out of your pan! And get a piping bag, the kind that you would normally use to ice cupcakes. This isn't totally necessary but will definitely make your life (and caramel application) much much easier.

Cream together butter and sugar, making sure to scrape the sides of the bowl to make sure it's all incorporated. Mix in the dry ingredients until well combined. Divide the dough in two and press the first half of the mixture into your parchment lined pan. Sprinkle the chocolate chips and pecans over the cookie dough.

Put the caramel sauce into the piping bag. Pipe the caramel sauce over the chocolate chips and pecans. You could try to use a spoon and just scoop it onto the chocolate chips, but from experience, it is gloopy and hard to spread evenly. Take the second half of the cookie dough mixture and sprinkle it over top of the chocolate chip/pecan/caramel mixture. Lightly press down over the caramel mixture.

Bake for approximately 30 minutes, or until golden brown. When it's done, allow to cool in the pan before using the parchment paper edges to lift it out of the pan. Use a long, sharp knife to cut into bars. Make sure to keep the ones at the very edge of the pan for yourself! That part is my favorite!

Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope I have inspired you a little today!

Freezer Cooking: Chocolate Chip Banana Bread with Oats

Hello world!! I can't believe it's been seven months since my last post! Life is just so busy and between my two crazy girls and work and my husband I haven't had a spare minute to post!

I did try out a bunch of new recipes, and took photos along the way, so hopefully I'll find some time to get my fingers to type out the recipes for you guys!!

The recipe for today's banana bread is beyond simple! I found it in a book filled with great recipes, specifically for big batch cooking. The book is called "Not Your Mother's Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook" by Jessica Fisher. I doubled the recipe and made it twice (so four times the original recipe) and it made EIGHT glorious loaves of goodness. For the recipe below I am putting the original recipe amounts from the cookbook, so it'll make two loaves. I also use foil loaf pans from the dollar store (3 for $1) when baking these, so they are easy to freeze, transport and gift to others.

Today was rainy and the girls and I spent the day cleaning the house and baking and just chilling out. It was a great way to spend the day!

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread with Oats

(Recipe from Not Your Mother's Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook)

Ingredients
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup mashed banana
1 1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup oats
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips, plus another handful to sprinkle on top

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl combine all of the ingredients and mix until well blended. Pour the batter evenly between two pans. Sprinkle another handful of chocolate chips on the top, just because chocolate makes me happy.

Bake for about an hour or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean.

A clear plastic treat bag (like the kind you use for goody bags) fits one of these loaves perfectly. You can seal one up and freeze them this way. It's also perfect for when you are making a bunch of banana loaves for a bake sale or some other fun event.

Thanks for stopping by today, I hope you like this recipe!!

Sweet Marie Bars

Hello my friends!! What an amazing summer it has been! So amazing, in fact, that I have not posted a single blog entry in over a month. I made a promise to myself this year that I would take time and just enjoy, and I certainly have enjoyed this summer. I'll have updates on the new and exciting goings-on in a later post (they involve babies, lots of babies!).

 

I'm back today with another yummy recipe to share with you guys. A massive group of us (around 35 of my closest family, friends and neighbors) made the trek out to a local waterslide park in August. We usually make this trip right around the date of Miss A's and my friend Kelly's birthdays. This year was no exception!

Last year I made some amazing Orange Creamsicle Cupcakes (that I apparently didn't post on the blog!). They tasted amazing, but in 32C heat, they melted by lunchtime. I knew that this year I needed something without icing, that would hold up in the crazy heat. Voila - Sweet Marie Bars! I had made them a few years ago, and a quick internet search found a recipe I could use.

Sweet Marie Bars
Adapted from AllRecipes.Com

Ingredients

1/2 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 packed brown sugar
3 cups Rice Krispies
1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. In a saucepan over medium heat melt the corn syrup, peanut butter and brown sugar.

When these ingredients have melted all together into a pot of luscious goodness, remove from the heat and add the rice krispies.

Mix really really well and press into a buttered square pan.

Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top and put in the oven for 2-5 minutes, just until the chocolate chips are melted. Remove from the oven and spread the melted chocolate chips over the top of the pan. Pop the pan into the fridge until the chocolate is firm.

The last time I made this recipe I doubled the amounts and made an 11x13 pan. These were gobbled up at our waterslides adventure, with just a few leftover for the rest of our week.

I am making these again this week for a party at work, I wonder if they will last till lunchtime!!

Thanks for stopping by today, I hope you enjoyed this recipe.


Linking to Joyful Homemaking, Not Just a Housewife and A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Chocolate Eclair Cake

Hello my friends! I'm back today (after a MONTH away?? How did that happen??)with a recipe!! Last week while aimlessly scrolling on Pinterest I found the most beautiful looking recipe. Now, for an event to make this lovely dessert. Lucky for me (and in turn, all of you) my co-worker and friend starts a new job next week. We are having a big potluck for her, and this lovely cake is my contribution!

I have to admit, I was a little apprehensive about baking the crust, but it turned out golden and gorgeous. And the filling? OH. MY. WORD. The FILLING. It is unbelievable! Soft and light and creamy and glorious. I may have to find a way to make individual éclairs so I can use it in my Quest for the Perfect Cupcake!!

The only issue I ran into was with the chocolate pudding. Since my Walmart didn't have a 5.1 oz box, I ended up buying two regular sized boxes and just keeping the excess pudding out for the girls. Win-Win! Now, without further adieu, here is the recipe!

Chocolate Éclair Cake

Recipe adapted from The Girl Who Ate Everything.com

Ingredients

Crust:
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1 cup flour
4 large eggs

Filling:
1 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened
2 102g boxes instant vanilla pudding
4 cups milk

Topping:
1 8 ounce container cool whip (enough to cover the cake, I didn't use the whole container)
Chocolate syrup (you could make your own, but I just used ice cream topping)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400F. Lightly grease a 9x13 glass baking pan. If the sides of your pan are too heavily greased, the batter will not stick to the sides. Not a huge deal, but it's prettier if the base bakes up the sides.

Here is the crust pre-bake, I tried to pull it the whole way up the sides of the pan

Éclair crust: In a medium saucepan, melt butter in water and bring to a boil, whisking constantly. Remove from heat and use your arm muscles to stir in that flour. At this point, I transferred by batter to my Kitchenaid mixer bowl, because I was worried that I wouldn't be able to mix fast enough - it worked perfectly! Mix in one egg at a time, mixing completely before adding the next egg. Spread the mixture in the pan, covering the bottom and sides evenly. The mixture will be very wet.


Here's the crust after baking, all puffy and golden brown

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown. Check it occasionally during baking to ensure the crust doesn't burn. Remove from the oven and let cool completely. The crust will likely be puffy and have big bubbles, just leave them, they'll go down on their own.

Filling: Whip the pudding mix and milk according to package directions. When it's all mixed up, remove 1/4 of the pudding into a separate bowl. This excess pudding is not needed for the recipe, so you can enjoy it anytime! Put the pudding into the fridge and wait until it is fully setup before moving on to the next step.

Whip cream cheese in the bowl of your stand mixer. If you don't have a stand mixer, I hope you have strong arm muscles because this process takes a while... Once the cream cheese is nice and smooth, slowly add the pudding to the cream cheese, and continue to whip together. Mix until there are no lumps and the mixture is nice and smooth. This took almost five minutes in my mixer.

When the crust is completely cooled, pour the filling into the crust. Spread out until it is evenly distributed over the entire crust. Top with a layer of cool whip (or if you are really good, some homemade whip cream) and drizzle chocolate syrup on top.

I hope my friend loves this cake as much as I loved making it!! Thanks for stopping by to read today, I really appreciate it!



Linking to Joyful Homemaking, Not Just a Housewife and A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing

Good afternoon everyone! Hope you are having a super fantastic day!! This is a crazy busy week for our family, it seems like I am running all over town playing chauffeur for the kids – even more than usual!

I found the time to make some super delicious, made with love cupcakes for some special ladies over the weekend. I made a batch for my younger sister’s baby shower on the weekend. These delicious little nibbles were chocolate cupcakes from this recipe, topped with chocolate fudge sauce and vanilla buttercream.

I also made these yummy desserts for a friend’s bridal shower at work this week. These are chocolate cupcakes (again from this recipe), filled with Jello Cheesecake Pudding and topped with vanilla buttercream. I have been asked time and again for my icing recipe, and since it certainly isn’t a trade secret, I thought I may as well share it here for all of you!

I have been making this very basic vanilla buttercream recipe for years. I am not sure where it originally came from, because I don’t need the recipe anymore, it’s stored in my head!

No cupcake is complete without a fancy swirl of icing on top, am I right? The swirl which looks so fancy and difficult is actually really really really easy! I use a 16” featherweight Wilton icing bag (though a smaller one would be fine, I just tend to bake in BIG batches, so I need a BIG bag to hold the icing) and a Wilton 1M icing tip. To make the swirl stand nice and tall, pipe a little wee star in the middle of the cupcake, then pipe in a circle around and over the star. That’s it! See? I told you it was easy!!

This icing recipe will cover 24 regular cupcakes, fancy swirl included!

Vanilla Buttercream Icing

Ingredients

1 cup butter, at room temperature (don’t take it out of the fridge and thaw in the microwave, it never turns out right… just leave it on the counter until it’s nice and soft)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract (yes, one tablespoon!)
4 cups icing sugar
2-4 tablespoons of milk, a splash at a time

Instructions

In the bowl of your stand mixer, beat the butter until light and creamy. Add a tablespoon of vanilla extract and mix another 20 seconds until well combined. Add the icing sugar, one cup at a time, beating between each addition.

When all four cups of icing sugar have been added, leave the mixer a-mixing for another minute or so, you’ll find it will come together a bit more. At this point, add milk, one tablespoon at a time until you reach the desired consistency for your icing. I like my piping icing to hold up, and be sort of the consistency of room temperature butter. If I was using the icing to frost a cake, I would add a bit more milk to thin it out.

Assemble your icing bag, with the coupler and the tip, fill the bag, and get piping!! If you are new to piping icing, lay some wax paper on the counter and practice! Anything you pipe you can throw back into the bag and use again. This icing also colors well. My favourite icing colors are made by Duff. You can also freeze this icing if you make a huge batch and have leftovers. Just put the icing into an airtight container and use it the next time you are baking.



Linking to Joyful Homemaking, Not Just a Housewife and A Bowl Full of Lemons.

2012 Round Up - Best and Most Loved Posts of the Year

I can hardly believe that it’s been almost a year since I decided to start this little blog. Back in Feb 2012 I wanted to participate in I’m An Organizing Junkie’s big organizational challenge. So I started this site and since then have spent many an evening baking, cleaning and organizing, all while taking photos and documenting the fun for all of you to read about it. 
 
In 2012 I managed to put together 164 blog posts! That seems crazy to me, and some weeks it was crazy! Fun, but a little insane. I’m lucky that my husband works evenings, so I don’t have to feel like I’m ignoring him when I sit under my blanket with HGTV on while blogging on my laptop.

I took a look at which posts were the most popular in 2012, and here is my round up of the most-viewed projects and posts from the past year.


Beef Enchilada Bake

An Organized Command Center

Little Girl Room Organizing

My 29 Day Organizational Success

Dr Pepper Cupcakes

Minimalish Rules

Spring Break Spring Cleaning

Tastes Homemade Box Cake Recipe

End of the Year Teacher Thank You Presents

Chicken Macaroni Bake Freezer Meal

Taming the Hair Ties

Linen Closet Loveliness

What do you think? Are any of these your favorites? 

 

Here are my favorite posts from the past year:

 

Secrets of a Happy Marriage

Butter Chicken Lasagne

Half Marathon Highlights

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes with Fluffy Peanut Butter Frosting

 

Summer of Fun Chart

Turtle Cupcakes

Pasta with Prawns in Boursin Cream Sauce

 

Kindergarten Graduation Presents

Super Amazing Totally Irresistible Chocolate Trifle

I hope you all like what you have seen so far from my little corner of the internet! There are many more fun and exciting things to come!