How To Take The Stress Out Of Holiday Baking

Holiday pageants, office parties, buying a tree, decorating said tree, shopping for presents, wrapping those presents, baking cookies… The Holiday to do list goes on and on. When it comes to the Holiday season it is easy to get overwhelmed and miss out on enjoying the little things.

Simple things like baking cookies for your co-workers can very quickly turn into a chore instead of a nice gesture. This can leave you unmotivated and filled with resentment when half of the office declares that they are starting their New Year’s diet three weeks early.

Instead of putting off the Holiday baking until the last minute, it’s time to start a new tradition. Not only will this tradition help you get a little more organized but it will help you have a little bit of family time. In our house this little tradition is called Cookie Day and we look forward to it every year.

 

 

What Is Cookie Day?

I’m glad you asked.

Cookie day is a girl’s day that we created a few years ago. It is set aside dedicated to making cookies with all of the girls in the family, big and small. Boys are welcome too but they often take off to cut down the Christmas Tree. It starts at 9:00am and ends around 6:00pm. Holiday music is played on repeat, cookie dough is eaten, frosting is everywhere and wine may (or may not) be consumed.

During cookie day there are somewhere between 16 and 20 dozen cookies made. Over the years we have always make sure to keep count. As we have added family members to the cookie day tradition, the number of cookies has increased tremendously.

These cookies can be then divided up among the girls to do with as they please. Some may eat them all, some may share with other family members and some might use them to take care of that office cookie guilt. Either way it is a way to make Holiday baking fun and make new family memories.

What Are The Benefits of Cookie Day?

While it is a day filled with family fun, cookie day also has many other benefits. Instead of saving the cookies to be made and frosted for the last minute, we typically have all of our cookies that we need for the holiday season done in early December.

Cookies can be frozen if you don’t need them until later in the month or if you have a hard time keeping your hands out of the cookie tin. You can pass cookies out to neighbors as an early Holiday present. They might enjoy getting treats a few weeks early before getting bogged down with their own. Other family members who don’t participate also may enjoy sneaking in a cookie or three as the weeks go on.

By creating a cookie day with your kids you won’t have to worry about having to throw something together at the last minute for Santa. Just make sure you set some aside while you’re baking so someone doesn’t eat them all.

All in all the main benefit of cookie day is that by the time Christmas rolls around a larger item will be knocked off your list…the baking.

 

How To Create Your Own Cookie Day

Depending on the year, I would recommend starting cookie day preparation as far in advance as possible. This year we started planning back in August due to busy holiday schedules.

Each person brings the ingredients to make 2-dozen of their favorite cookies. These recipes can be ones they’ve found on Pinterest that they are dying to try, it can be a family secret or it can be a recipe they made up themselves. The host will also make a batch of sugar cookie dough the night before and provide the cookie cutters to go with it.

I would recommend starting with the sugar cookies if kids are involved in cookie day. Typically that is the most exciting type of cookie to make and their attention spans won’t last too far into the day.

As each tray of cookies bakes you can start to rotate in another type of cookie. By the time the last batch of cookies comes out of the oven, kids will be covered in frosting and the sugar cookies will be done.

While we originally started cookie day as something fun to do for my niece, it has evolved into a day that takes one more thing off of our last minute to do list. If it weren’t for cookie day I would be spending Christmas Eve making sure Santa had something good to eat.

 

Kristin is a boy mom, blogger and marketer. Her days revolve around drinking too much coffee and her evenings are focused on family time. She shares a look inside life with two boys, a husband and a dog at Leggings and Lattes.