First Holiday Cookie Party

I hosted a Holiday Cookie Party one year, and it has basically become tradition… it’s such a great way to bring my friends together and have fun baking and decorating festive cookies. I’ve planned in a couple of ways–one in which people bring ingredients for baking and frosting, and then we bake and decorate. Second, I prepare most of the cookies and frosting ahead of time to streamline the process (guests can bring anything special or particular type of cookie they might want to bake), otherwise, everything is basically ready to go. I do leave a batch or two of dough ready-to-roll so that guests can choose their own shapes to roll, cut, bake and decorate 🙂

I LOVE seeing the array of unique creativity and to see my friends have fun. I’m not always good at taking pictures of all of them, but below are the ones that I did capture.

(Please excuse the horrible quality of photo documentation!)

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Baking with Pictures

This Ikea – Homemade is Best site left an impression with me the first time I saw it. I thank a former co-worker who has since passed for this gift. Having an extremely visual learning style, and appreciation for organization and graphics and design, makes me appreciate this book even more. I love it because it demonstrates a universal language to me with undeniable grace and beauty.

Not nearly as detailed or graphically successful, I created these picture menu sheets for fun to send to my family in Korea so that they could make my Mom’s famous cookie bars without me…

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Page 1 – Ingredients

 

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Page 2 – Directions

 

Later on, a family member in Korea created this Korean potato recipe for me….

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Who doesn’t love a good chocolate chip cookie!?

I remember these cookies coming out almost perfect. I went by the January/February 1996 Cook’s Illustrated magazine and the recipe “Solving the Mystery of the Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie” (pages 22 and 23) figuring it must be good with all the testing that goes into the articles! Right?! 🙂 Well they were good!

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And I even went beyond, dipped the cookies in semi-sweet chocolate and then drizzled with white chocolate for an extra touch 🙂

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