My cousin sent me a text yesterday that said, "you can never have too many women in one kitchen." Clearly, she was being sarcastic because we all know too many women in a kitchen is a recipe for disaster. However, yesterday I had a day of success with lots of babies, girls, and women all baking in one kitchen.
The women in my family have a christmas cookie baking party every year, as many families do. Mothers, daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and cousins all come together bringing either their recipe or their dough to make their cookies. Some are old favorites, like the peanut butter balls, and some are new experiments, like the red velvet cake cookies.
Cookie parties are a great way to share recipes with one another, learn how to bake a new cookie, and spend some quality time with people you love. Some tricks we've picked up to make it a success and not a war zone:
1. Make your dough the night before.
2. Bring your own supplies (mixing bowls, measuring cups, ingredients, candies, etc)...and some extras for those who forgot.
3. Delegate easy cookie decorating tasks to small children, like rolling in powdered sugar and sprinkling toppings on.
4. If you can, pick a kitchen that has more than one oven.
5. Organize the order of the baking of the cookies via temperature (i.e. start with the 350's first and work your way up).
7. Ask the people who don't like to bake to be the dish washer-ers.
8. Go for a run before the party and eat a very healthy breakfast so you can eat cookies the rest of the day.
9. Have a designated area for all of your finished cookies to cool.
10. Be patient, take pictures, and its ok if your cookies don't turn out. You'll end up with way too many when the party is over, anyway.
Look at all those colors! We laughed, baked, and ate, and when the party was over, everyone took home a wide variety of cookies filled with memories, yumminess, love, and sugar.
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