Nkauj Ntsuab Designs & Photography Blog

Published in Today’s Missoulian News Paper’s Holiday Gift Guide about My cookie Exchange from Last Year.

What exactly is a cookie exchange? In short, it’s a small party organized by friends where you all meet and exchange cookies that you’ve baked so that you can enjoy them over the holiday season with friends and family. You can make up your own rules for when and where and whether or not you want to have dinner or just wine during the exchange. The rules are up to you but the main idea is that the party is organized for you and friends to exchange cookies; some examples of rules might be that all party attendees have to make cookies with a traditional family recipe, or one of your rules might be that everything is made from scratch.

How it works is that you have to know how many people are coming exactly and plan with each other what type of cookie you are going to bring to share so that the same cookies don’t show up at the party. After you know how many people are attending then every attendee must plan to bake enough cookies so that each attendee will walk away with a good amount of cookies. For example if 6 people are organizing this party, you might have each person bake 72 cookies so that everyone will walk away with a dozen of each type of cookie.

Last year, my friend Heather brought to our group of friends, the idea of the cookie exchange. No one hesitated because one, we all love to bake or just make goodies and two, it was a great way for all of us friends to share some quality time together before the busy holiday season with family. We had the exchange at Heather’s house in early December; there were about 10 plus who attended with a few additions of cookies from friends who wanted to do the exchange but couldn’t make it to the actual party. One of our rules was that all cookies had to be made from a recipe and not from premade dough or one of those cookie packages. The party had everything ranging from sugar cookies, to butter scotch cookies, pumpkin cookies, and more! Some had holiday themed frosting designs, others were holiday shapes, and some were just too yummy to describe.

We laid our cookies out on the table then each of us walked around the table collecting about 6 of each cookie and  made these amazing trays of cookies. After the exchange, we had several left over cookies because some ladies made a little extra due to recipes and we sat and talked the night away while enjoying sweets. I took my cookies home and shared some with my good neighbor friend and the rest was shared at a family dinner. Everyone was blown away with the cookies, and the neat thing behind that was that I didn’t even bake all of them. I only had to buy ingredients to make my one type of cookie and was able to share some 12 different kinds of cookies.

So this is not an old tradition of mine, but I hope that it continues to be an ongoing tradition. It’s a great way to spend time with people you care about and enjoy delicious treats made from everyone. If you don’t have a family recipe to make cookies, you can easily find recipes online and just bake those from scratch or tweak them a little so that you can start a family recipe tradition. Can’t wait to see what everyone will bring to share this year!