Christmas Cookie Contest in a Box: Everything You Need to Host a Christmas Cookie Contest

By Gina Hyams

A festive kit that “brings aspiring bakers, die-hard cookie lovers and anyone who adores cookie swaps together for a fun holiday experience” (MassLive.com).

Christmas Cookie Contest in a Box has everything you need to host your own contest! It includes a link to download, customize, and print scorecards, judge badges, place cards, and prize ribbons. The accompanying handbook includes recipes from passionate, talented, professional, and semiprofessional bakers, along with photos of the cookies and personal stories behind these special cookie recipes. Showcasing a dozen winning Christmas cookie recipes, along with cookie swap tips from an expert baker, the book has chapters on a brief history of Christmas cookies, how to run the cookie contest, the art of judging a contest, baking tips, and a cookie tunes playlist.

Recipes include:

• Berlinerkranser by Jessie Oleson, author of CakeSpy Presents Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life
• Pistachio Butter Cookies by Stacy Adimando, author of The Cookiepedia: Mixing, Baking, and Reinventing the Classics
• Chai-Spiced Meltaway Cookies by Jodi Liano. director of the San Francisco Cooking School
• Vegan Orange Ginger Cookies by Lorena Novak Bull, author of The Everything® Vegan Baking Cookbook
• Smile Cookies by Cindy Mushet, author of Baking Kids Love
• Gingersnap Thumbprints with Cranberry-Apricot Filling by Julia M. Usher, author of Cookie Swap and Ultimate Cookies
• Minty Chocolate Rounds by Valerie Peterson, author of Cookie Craft and Cookie Craft Christmas

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449423865

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

THE JOY OF CHRISTMAS COOKIES

…the cookie party gives back. It rejuvenates, and gives meaning and inspiration to the holidays, embodying the qualities that we all love best—friendship, food, and festivity.

Robin Olson, author of The Cookie Party Cookbook

When you start talking Christmas cookies, faces light up. Everybody’s got a favorite cookie that reminds them of someone they love. For me, it’s my Grandmother Mae’s chocolate rum balls. Every holiday season she made them with love in her Nebraska kitchen and mailed them off in festive care packages to family members scattered across the country. The memory of those cookies and the care with which she sent them makes me smile.

To host a cookie contest party is about more than butter, sugar, and sprinkles. It’s about forging relationships and a sense of community. Every Christmas cookie is a love story of sorts. Invite your friends and family, your neighbors or coworkers, sports team, or church, school, or book group to participate.

There’s nothing like a little friendly competition to add sparkle to a holiday party. The making and sharing of cookies inspires good times and goodwill. My hope is that Christmas Cookie Contest in a Box, with its prize ribbons, judge badges, place cards, winning recipes, scorecards, and cookie songs, will make for a happy day for you and yours. Merry baking!

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS COOKIES

The history of Christmas cookies dates back more than seven hundred years to medieval Europe when bakers invented holiday gingerbread. The first gingerbreads were thick with honey and spiced with ginger, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, white pepper, and anise. These treats were more like candy than the ginger-based breads and cookies enjoyed today.

By the 1500s, the tradition of Christmas cookies had spread throughout Europe. Swedish families celebrated the yuletide season with pepparkakor (gingersnaps), Norwegians with krumkake (cardamom-spiced, cone-shaped wafer cookies), Germans with buttery spritz cookies, and the Dutch with speculaas (shortbread cookies imprinted with holiday-themed wooden stamps).

Dutch and German settlers brought their cookie recipes, tin cookie cutters, and decorative molds with them to the New World in the 1600s. During the 1930s, the tradition of annual Christmas cookie exchange parties took root in the United States, and American children first started leaving cookies and milk out for Santa on Christmas Eve. The term cookie swap came into vogue in the 1950s.

The tradition of Christmas cookies continues to inspire bakers, who find endless creative ways to express the holiday spirit with sugar: delectable drop cookies, chewy, gooey bar cookies, scrumptious icebox and sandwich cookies, elegant pastry confections, and all manner of shaped and cut dough delights.

ADVANCE PLANNING

Choose the date, time, and venue for your Christmas cookie party. People’s calendars fill up quickly during the holidays, so the earlier you schedule your event, the better. Ideally send the participants a save-the-date message in early fall and then follow up with the actual invitation four to six weeks before the contest.

Consider whether you want to have a theme for your contest—like gingerbread cookies, cookies that incorporate chocolate, vegan or gluten-free cookies, family heirloom recipes, or mother-daughter baking teams. It’s fine to just leave things open as well, inviting contestants to simply bake their favorite Christmas cookies.

Figure out whom you’d like to judge your contest and invite them. There are five cookie judge badges with this kit. Local celebrities, politicians, and community leaders make