by Gary Allen

Created on: February 25, 2009

Cookie exchanges are a way for close friends or casual acquaintances to get together for a purpose, and have a sweet time doing it. The group can be made up of as little as half a dozen people. If you like to do things on a larger scale, invite a full dozen. The cookie exchange will help you prepare your pantry for all the holiday parties, and ensure that you have treats available for any unexpected drop in guests.

The holidays are the best time for bringing out the inner baker in all of us, making it the easiest time of year to put a group together. A fresh stack of cookies arranged on a plate can bring people together like no other activity. So be sure to assemble a group of people that will feel comfortable indulging in their wares. Because when everyone gets back together to divvy up the goodie sacks, it will only be natural to set out a few plates with samples and enjoy the fruits of your labors. After you are finished, you might decide that a cookie exchange would be a good idea for a couple of other holidays during the year. With enough willing friends, this is a way to keep the samples coming, year round for all the holidays.

Gather together a dozen of your friends. Since this is your idea, you can pass out twelve different recipes, or everyone can use their own. If your group has an international flavor to it, individual recipes will work very nicely It's amazing what variety of cookie recipes can come from different countries. Once your friends decide on which recipe to bake, let them know how the cookie exchange works.

Everyone will bake twelve dozen cookies. Each baker has a recipe for their own twelve dozen. They will package their cookies by the dozen. It usually works best if the bakers use some kind of disposable bag, such as a Ziplock.
It too hard tracking down any type of Tupperware containers.

Make a plan to get together two weeks after passing out the recipes. That way, you have a plan with a date. It helps to keep things moving along.

On the planned get together day, after everyone has tasted some cookies and caught up with each other, each baker will give the others a dozen cookies. Remind each person to save a dozen for themselves. At the end of the cookie swap, each baker will have twelve dozen cookies. And each will have twelve different recipes to sample.

The gathering together of friends can be the reason unto itself for the cookie swap. If your group is of a generous nature, perhaps one or more of your groups could stop by a woman's shelter, and offer a batch of cookies for the people living there. There is usually a swarm of toddlers and older children that will eyeball your treats with a certain hunger.

Cookies, are merely the by-products of your cookie exchange. The actual tangible gift, is that of friendship and camaraderie that has grown over a period of time. Some of the bakers will have only just recently joined your circle of friends, or maybe there is one you will have known a lifetime. Either way, it will be another way to grow closer as a group of friends.

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