We each have traditions that we love and that make the Holidays special. One of our family’s favorite traditions at Christmas is Christmas Cookie Baking Weekend! We know it isn’t quite Christmas until we have had Christmas Cookie Baking Weekend.
When I was little we would make a few different types of cookies and drop them off at the houses of loved ones and this was always a highlight for me. When I was single and living on my own I continued this tradition and was able to enjoy seeing the faces of those who received the cookies. When I got married, my husband and I continued the tradition which seemed to grow each year. Then we were blessed with two little children and the tradition continued but has been altered here and there as circumstances dictated. The year my son was born in December, we made a LOT of Christmas bars. Now, we are back to our normal tradition and we’ve had so much fun with this.
Each year we make between 13-18 different types of cookies, but this is by far not the number of batches we make. 🙂 Most of the time, our cookies stay the same each year, but sometimes we add a new one here or there. In 2022, we made Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chocolate White Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chocolate Chip Cookies Stuffed with Oreos, Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies, Mint Chocolate Bars, Mint Chocolate Chip Muffin bites, Molasses Cookies, No Bakes, Snickerdoodles Bar Cookies, Sugar Cookies, Ooey Gooey Reese’s Peanut Butter Bars, Christmas Crack, and Peanut Butter Cookies. After years of doing this, we now separate the cookies into bags so that strong flavors/scents don’t overpower other cookies so we had five bags (peanut butter, mint, molasses, and regular – the regular needed two bags this year).
I do all of the baking in two days, but the prep time takes a lot longer. I have started collecting ingredients as early as August to make sure we have all of the things we need for each cookie dough. Then, I prepare dough starting the Tuesday before my Cookie Baking Weekend. I generally do the various Chocolate Chip Cookie doughs first and start rolling the dough so by the time I start baking on Friday I have anywhere between 200-350 cookies ready to bake. This year, I had mint chocolate chip cookies (2 batches), chocolate chip cookies (2 batches), chocolate chocolate chip cookies (1 batch), chocolate chip cookie dough for the oreos (1 batch), and chocolate white chocolate chip dough (1 batch) rolled and sugar cookie dough chilling before Friday. When I do start baking, it’s just tray after tray of yumminess! 🙂
On Friday and Saturday, I will make between 4-8 additional cookie doughs depending on the year. In 2022, this left me making dough for snickerdoodles, molasses (two batches, peanut butter (1 batch), ooey gooey peanut butter bars (2 batches) and mint chocolate chip mini muffins (two batches). While there is no dough for the next three cookies, there is prep work and these are done on Friday or Saturday. By starting earlier with the dough preparation, it appears like I baked for days, but I only baked for about 5-6 hours each day.
The best part of the Christmas Cookie Baking Weekend is delivering the cookies to friends and family to enjoy! The looks of joy as they see the different types is always worth the time taken to make them and hearing about their favorite cookie is always a highlight.
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