Organizing a Christmas Cookie Exchange with Neighbors

With Christmas rapidly approaching you may be making lists on the holiday chores that you will need to complete. With the busy lives we all lead it is hard to find the time to fit everything in. I am sure that you have friends, family and neighbors that feel the same holiday stress that you are experiencing.

If you are in need of relieving some holiday stress then pull your friends, family and/or neighbors together and have a Christmas cookie exchange. I tried this last year with a few family members and it was great. Since I talked about how well the cookie exchange worked for me last year we have tripled the amount of people participating in the exchange.

If you are like me you like a variety of Christmas cookies. Having to make a variety of cookies is very time consuming and can really start to get expensive. I like the wide variety of color and flavors but each batch makes at least three or four dozens of cookies. I would rather have a half of dozen to a dozen of each cookie rather than larger amounts of each one.

This is how we worked the cookie exchange: we first gathered the people that wanted to be in the exchange, and then we got together with the names of cookies and recipes for each one. We appoint each person to make a cookie. Each person in the exchange will purchase all the needed ingredients for each cookie and then make the prearranged amount of cookies. You may only have to make three or four batches of cookies as opposed to ten to fifteen batches.

Set rules and goals before gathering together with your friends, family and/or neighbors. Do not wait until the get together to start the organizing. Some suggestions I have about Organizing a Christmas cookie exchange with your neighbors is to be particular about the selection of cookies you make. You are after different types of cookies. Ask each participant ahead of time is there is a particular cookie they like to make. Make a master list and have a count of the number of participants. This will give you an idea on how many dozen each person needs to make.

You can start your cookie exchange any time you are ready to get a meeting organized. The earlier you start the less you have to complete once Christmas approaches. You can purchase large rectangle container and freeze the cookies ahead of time. Simply defrost the cookies and display them on a tray and you are set for the holiday.