How to organize a cookie exchange

By PAM DAVIS
© St. Petersburg Times,
published December 12, 2001

Cookie recipes Christmas cookies: The social circle Baking cookies is a passion for one group of women who for 17 years have met each December for a holiday cookie swap. How to organize a cookie exchange It may be too late to organize a Christmas cookie swap before Christmas this year, but there's always next year. Selma Robinson-Ayers, a 17-year cookie exchange veteran, offers these tips for planning the event: The best cookie cookbooks out there There are many cookie cookbooks on the market that are equally as helpful for their recipes and tips as they are for their photographic inspiration.

It may be too late to organize a Christmas cookie swap before Christmas this year, but there's always next year. Selma Robinson-Ayers, a 17-year cookie exchange veteran, offers these tips for planning the event:

Decide on the number of people to invite. Six is a good number for a first-time cookie exchange.

You may want to do more at your party than just swap cookies. Decide what kind of activities your guests may like. Most exchanges leave time for tasting and discussing each cookie.

At Robinson-Ayers cookie swaps, the women make crafts, drink tea, exchange gifts and are entertained by things such as an auction or a talent show.

Robinson-Ayers recommends choosing a theme to focus the party. Some of her past themes include Gingerbread, Down Home Country, Winter Wonderland, Toys and Childhood Memories and Christmas Around the World.

Have the participants include their cookie recipe in each batch they swap. Robinson-Ayers takes things a step further by requesting recipes a week before the event so she can make keepsake recipe books for each participant.

The six cookie exchange participants should make six dozen of one kind of cookie. Each person will receive one dozen. For a bigger group, give out half a dozen cookies per person, Robinson-Ayers advises.

Though it's not done this way at Robinson-Ayers party, other cookie exchanges require participants to bring empty containers. All the cookies are set out, and guests gather them and put them in their own containers.

At Robinson-Ayers' Holiday Cookie Exchange, each woman will bring specially decorated themed containers -- one for each cookie swapper -- filled with her cookies. Those containers are then passed out to each woman.

-- PAMELA DAVIS

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