Most of us are very busy as the holidays approach. After shopping for gifts, decorating our homes and attending parties, there is little time left. Don’t have time to bake all of the treats you’d like? Why not invite people over and host a cookie swap. Each guest can make several dozen of their favorite cookies and bring them along with the recipe.
Tips to hosting a great cookie swap include:
- Invite your guests early. Make sure they are friends who enjoy baking. Many of them will already have other plans in place and they do need time to bake all of those delicious cookies! Set a date for the cookie swap that is fairly close to Christmas. You want the cookies to be fresh but you also don’t want to interfere with all of those Christmas parties!
- Keep the number of guests to a reasonable size. Depending on space the ideal number could run anywhere from 4 to 8.
- Decide on the number of cookies each guest should bring. A good idea is a dozen for sampling and another dozen for each of you to take home. If this is too many, cut the number of cookies to a half dozen.
- Check with your guests for allergies. Do any of your guests have peanut allergies or problems with gluten? Search out recipes that all can enjoy and still not have to worry about having an allergic reaction.
- Offer bags or boxes for your guests to use when they leave. It helps if they can keep each type of cookie separate and labelled.
Cookie swaps are meant to be fun. Include the kids if you can and set up a separate table for them with nourishing snacks and cookies with a low sugar content. Add some other non sweet snacks such as olives and cheese for the adults along with plenty of coffee and tea or hot chocolate. Bake your cookies, have your guests over and enjoy!
