How to Start a Family Christmas Cookie Night Tradition

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Learn how to start a family Christmas cookie night tradition with kid-friendly recipes your family will look forward to every year! 

We love a good tradition around these parts especially when it revolves around family and the holidays.

A single event deemed worthy by my children of repeating = tradition (anyone hear Tevye singing yet from “Fiddler on the Roof?”).

“But Mommy we did it last time!” And the truth is I don’t know if it is possible to have too many family traditions at this time of year.

So what is this cookie night tradition?

Ok, I wish I had never mentioned “Fiddler on the Roof” because now I am annoyed.  That song will be in our heads all day long.  My apologies.

Oh my gosh, look how little she looks! We all put on our “working aprons” as Caleb calls them, and unlike the child above we also wear pants.

.We bake Christmas goodies together which we then put into gift bags along with our family Christmas card to give away to neighbors, the cleaning lady, piano teacher, school teachers, coaches, etc.

Lily confiscated Caleb’s apron, so he DIY’d his own!!  Bahaha.  #kitchentowelapron

I bought these cute, clear snowflake treat bags in bulk on Amazon – a stack of taller bags (11″) that came with a red ribbon and then these smaller sized bags (5.5″) that are self-sealing.

Here is last year’s goodie bag stash!  Aren’t these holiday bags cute?

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How to Start a Family Christmas Cookie Night Tradition

#1.  Make A treat list

The first step is to decide what you want to put on your Christmas treats list to give away each year. Ours varies from year to year, but always includes a mix from the list below.

• Chocolate-covered pretzel sticks
• Vanilla Christmas pudding cookies
• Chocolate Christmas pudding cookies
• Sugar cookies
• Toffee crackers
• Puppy chow

 

How to Start a Family Christmas Cookie Night Tradition

#2.  Create a master sheet from your treat list.

Whatever recipes you put onto your list, get a blank piece of paper and copy all the recipes onto one piece of paper and then put it into a protective sleeve.  (Also I love my cute gray leatherette recipe notebook from C.R Gibson!). 

This way year to year you only have to find one paper in your cookbook to work off of instead of flipping back and forth through pages.

I shared an example of this in my post “How to Host a Fondue Party” and showed you my Master Sheet for the annual event.  Anything I do on a reoccurring basis that involves recipes I create its “own sheet.”

Work smarter not harder!!

How to Start a Family Christmas Cookie Night Tradition

#3.  Aprons, music, go-time!

As I said we all get our aprons on, blare our favorite Pandora Christmas station and get to work.

This picture makes my heart so happy.  Mommy’s girls.

Working hard.

The kids are told at the beginning they can have 3 treats for the evening.  Whichever they prefer but they each get 3.

I learned quickly to set a number or else 42 cookies later they are bouncing off the walls.

Zach decided to break out his festive Christmas PJs for this year’s cookie night.  Lookin’ good, babe.

Crazy Lily girl.

 

How to Start a Family Christmas Cookie Night Tradition

Ok, let’s talk about our list!

Not all of these recipes have made it to the blog yet, but let’s take a sneak peak!!

Chocolate Covered Pretzel Sticks

Dip.  Snip.  Drizzle.  That’s about it for the pretzels!

I am planning on doing a post as there are some tricks to making it easier on yourself, but chocolate-covered pretzels are so EASY and YUMMY!!

And they are gorgeous. Is that weird? We are talking about chocolate drizzled on top of chocolate here.

Definitely not weird.

I use the same process to make my chocolate strawberries as well.

Christmas Pudding Cookies

Ok, this cookie dough recipe has been my go-to for years.

I cannot even remember where this recipe came from, but I have been making them since college.

I make chocolate dough and vanilla dough with, of course, pudding!

They are buttery, moist, and still one of the yummiest cookies I have ever tasted.

We make vanilla and chocolate dough and add mini-Christmas M&Ms.

I have probably made at least a dozen varieties with this dough over the years.  The vanilla dough I have done toffee bits, chocolate chips, chocolate and mint chips, cinnamon chips, M&Ms and probably others that I can’t think of at the moment. 

The chocolate dough is yummy with Reese’s pieces, Andes chocolate mint chips, peanut butter chips, M&Ms…

Stay tuned for this yummy pudding cookie dough recipe that can be made at least a dozen ways!

Sugar Cookies

Somewhere in here, you have to make it easy on yourself, SO, I buy sugar cookie mixes.  Yup.  Keep it easy.

Just make sure whatever boxed mix you get is the right mixture for roll-out sugar cookies.  We didn’t make these this year, but here we are last year!

I keep my Christmas cookie cutters in this adorable box I got at Michael’s Craft Store.

Ah, look how much younger Gracie and Caleb look!

Ok, so for anyone super confused as to all the kitchens, this one is kitchen #2 and the other one was kitchen #3.

First, we renovated an old Victorian built in 1890, then we moved to a Colonial foreclosure (pictured above), then we bought a super cute little French Country Cottage fixer upper which we renovated, then sold, and now we are in a rental house until we find our dream property.

 

Toffee Crackers

Last but not least, these toffee crackers are the Christmas cookie night winner EVERY YEAR.  A couple of the football coaches on Zach’s staff would always check to make sure their bag included the toffee crackers. 

I think they may have resigned on the spot, otherwise.   There is something about these sweet and salty treats that are hard to stop eating until you are on the verge of a hyperglycemic coma (ie: sugar coma).

We make one pan without any toppings and then another pan with crushed almonds.  You can add chocolate chips, walnuts, almonds or pecans.  Roasted almonds are absolutely fabulous on top.

Lily, I see you. Stay out of the Christmas bags!!

And because I can.  Bahaha.  What a face.

What Christmas cookie traditions do you have?!  I would love to hear all about it!!

Pin any of the images below for later!

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