Some helpful (and some questionably helpful) tips for those extended holiday baking marathons.
Just a few more sleeps till Christmas! I’m officially on Christmas break, in vacation mode, watching weird 90’s TV and trying (not very hard) not to eat too many Christmas cookies. The cookie thing’s not going great, for reasons that will soon become apparent…
I’ve written about my gingerbread house tradition and my holiday movie tradition. My one other Christmas constant is the annual Christmas cookie box for friends and neighbors. I LOVE baking for people, but I realize that people don’t always want the temptation around, so I try to limit the amount of sweet giving I do. But come Christmas time, all bets are off. I’m going to bake for you, because I like you, and I want you to have something delicious.
Some people make boxes/trays for a truly astounding number of people, so they start baking and freezing weeks in advance. I am not nearly so ambitious (or social), so my Christmas cookie box baking is confined to one glorious, exhausting, sugar-filled day a year. And instead of a recipe today, I’m going to share a few of my favorite tips for making that day of marathon baking a little less stressful and a little more magical.
Just a heads up, I composed this list while doing my own baking this weekend, and it got a little weird towards the end.
I’ve written about my gingerbread house tradition and my holiday movie tradition. My one other Christmas constant is the annual Christmas cookie box for friends and neighbors. I LOVE baking for people, but I realize that people don’t always want the temptation around, so I try to limit the amount of sweet giving I do. But come Christmas time, all bets are off. I’m going to bake for you, because I like you, and I want you to have something delicious.
Some people make boxes/trays for a truly astounding number of people, so they start baking and freezing weeks in advance. I am not nearly so ambitious (or social), so my Christmas cookie box baking is confined to one glorious, exhausting, sugar-filled day a year. And instead of a recipe today, I’m going to share a few of my favorite tips for making that day of marathon baking a little less stressful and a little more magical.
Just a heads up, I composed this list while doing my own baking this weekend, and it got a little weird towards the end.
The Tips
A Few Weeks in Advance
Decide early on what you are going to bake. That way, there’s no last minute scrambling through Pinterest/books/your favorite blogs for recipes. This also gives you time to…
Test untried recipes. Not everyone likes what you like; recipes that have rave reviews might not be to your taste. Some recipes are finicky and more trouble than they are worth. Some are just plain bad. These are things you want to know before baking day.
The Day Before
Organize your recipes. Tab the pages in your recipe books. Print recipes off the internet. Tag the applicable recipes in your Evernote account CHRISTMASCOOKIESYALL. However you access your recipes, make sure they are ready so you don’t have to go hunting for them.
Check your ingredients. Do you have enough eggs? Enough Butter? Is you baking powder still fresh? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you don’t want to have to go to the store in the middle of a baking project.
Make a plan. It doesn’t have to be detailed, but it will make your life so much easier if you already have the the answers to questions like: How many sticks of butter/eggs/ounces of cream cheese are you going to need at room temperature? Which dough is going to need to rest before baking or cool before frosting? Do you have safe places in your fridge for all the cookies you need to chill? (I forgot this step this year and my fridge was like a life-size version of Jenga for about three hours on Saturday.)
Day Of
Sleep in.
Caffeinate.
Set the mood. I went Christmas tunes this year, but a Christmas-themed movie marathon or not-seasonally-relevant-but-so-good-it-doesn’t-matter Hamilton soundtrack listen will also make the time fly by.
Clean as you go. No one wants to clean as they cook, but you’ll want to clean even less after you have spent the last four hours baking, you had to mix the final batch of cookies in your last clean dish (the kettle) and your kitchen looks like a peppermint-flavored bomb went off in it.
Don’t cry over spilt buttercream. Disasters might happen. It’s okay. Christmas will still come, whether your cookies are perfect or whether they start a small kitchen fire.
Day drink. Only if you want to.
Taste each cookie as it comes out of the oven. Because you deserve nice things, because sugar will get you through this, and because it’s your duty and privilege as a holiday home baker.
Immediately After
Give the kitchen a half-hearted once over. The discarded egg shells and butter wrappers on the counter? You should probably clean that up before bed time. The sugar-sticky floors? They can wait till tomorrow.
Order pizza for dinner. You cooked all day. You deserve it.
Post about your day on social media! You survived your marathon day of holiday baking. The world needs to know so that it can acknowledge your achievement!
2015 Christmas Cookie Boxes
I followed most of my own tips this year and things went pretty smoothly (there was a small incident of forgetting the eggs in the peanut butter cookies and having to add them in after the flour, but they turned out fine). Included in the boxes this year were:
Oreo Truffles, Snickerdoodle Cookie Sandwiches with Eggnog Buttercream Filling, Mini Classic Peanut Butter Cookies, Christmas Shortbread Tidbits, Linzer Cookies with Raspberry Jam
Next year, I think I’d like to do a box of five or six differently flavored macarons, but who knows what will happen between now and then? What about you guys? Do you do a Christmas box/tray? Are you a marathon baker like me, or do you take your time and make your cookies over a few weeks?
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