Do you celebrate the holidays by making or receiving cookie boxes? I am aware of their existence but have never attempted to create them myself. Some people have a yearly custom of giving Christmas Cookie Boxes as gifts. Cookies are typically baked in large quantities and then packaged in individual gift boxes. This is the sort of present that is given to everyone in the gift giver’s inner circle, including the postman and the instructors of the giver’s children. Because I enjoy both gift-giving and baking, I took a day off work in December to make these for the first time in maybe ten years. If you’d like to make your own, here’s a simple “how to” as well as some advice to keep the process as stress-free as possible!
As a First Step, Tally Up The Number of Boxes You’ll Be Creating.
As a result, I baked enough cookies for 9 containers. Three are hostess gifts for the people who have invited me to holiday gatherings, three are for friends I am seeing in the days before Christmas (even though I don’t generally do gifts with friends, I like to have a little something to give someone if I am seeing them right before the holiday), and one is for an out-of-state friend that I do usually send something to at Christmas. That leaves me with two extras: one to have on hand in case an unexpected holiday gathering arises, and another to share with my relatives when they arrive for the holidays.
I aimed for maximum variety in the boxes while still being able to finish the job in a day. Because of this, I decided to bake 9 separate batches of Christmas Cookie Boxes. In other words, there are a total of nine different kinds of cookies in each box, with only a few of each kind included. This works out to around half a batch per person, taking into account the inevitable breakage, imperfection, etc. There’s no reason you couldn’t do this on a lesser scale, perhaps with fewer Christmas Cookie Boxes choices or fewer biscuits in each box.
Your Next Step Should Be to Select a Recipe.
I don’t sure I got my blend quite right this year, honestly. Snickerdoodles, sprinkle drop-style cookies, jam thumbprints, and chocolate crinkle Christmas Cookie Boxes are the four types of round cookies you’ll find in my box. If I could go back in time, I would make certain adjustments to the recipe for next year, such as making the thumbprint cookie into a bar cookie and the rugelach into a rectangle. Gingerbread, snickerdoodles, and biscotti, all of which were tan and brown, were all clustered together in my kitchen. Instead of gingerbread men, I would do sugar Christmas Cookie Boxes cut-outs and spend more time icing/decorating them next year. I would also dip the biscotti to give it more interest and a different colour. Finally, I would probably leave out the snickerdoodles because, as much as I love them, they don’t add much to the presentation.
Please Gather Your Packages
I threw this together at the last minute and bought a blank white box from Amazon to use for Christmas Cookie Boxes. Adding a bow makes them more presentable, and the transparent lid lets me peek inside to see whether there are any cookies I might like. These are great because they come in a bulk quantity and may be used for future food-related gifts.
However, there are a plethora of alternates, such as the more conventional cookie tins (which, as a friend of mine pointed out, are surprisingly easy to thrift!). I think it’s a fantastic plan for next year. Set up the containers you’ll be utilising, whether they’re boxes or tins. It’s helpful to have a mental picture of how many cookies you’ll need to make to fill the tin. There should be enough space so that they aren’t touching but you can still see the variety, but the bigger the box, the better it will look.
Food Shopping & Creating Your Schedule
Gather all of your recipes into one place, and then use that place to create a shopping list. Recipes like those are handy to have printed down and on hand.
Now, at least a day before you plan to begin, you should review your recipes and create a schedule for yourself. I found it helpful to divide up the tasks in this way:
To begin, leave butter out on the counter the night before baking day so it may reach to room temperature. Two full sticks of butter were left out on the counter because most of the recipes I was using called for softened butter. In case you forgot, here’s how to soften butter in a hurry:
Then I went through all of my recipes and classified them based on whether or not the dough required refrigeration. Many types of Christmas Cookie Boxes, especially those with intricate shapes, benefit from being refrigerated for a while before being rolled out or cut. Many times I have tried to cut corners by skipping this step since I was either too impatient or forgot about it. If a recipe says to chill it, chances are you should.
I mixed 5 batches in rapid succession, beginning with the dough that required the longest chill time (gingerbread, 3 hours). I also used my phone to set timers for when they would be finished in the fridge. You can keep them for as long as you need, but don’t remove them too soon. Another approach to go about this would have been to split this job in two days; have all those doughs prepared and chilled the night before and start baking right away in the morning.
After putting the doughs in the refrigerator to chill, I turned on the oven and began mixing the doughs that would be ready to bake immediately. To bake them all, I switched back and forth between the chilled and unchilled batches.
If you have excellent hand-eye coordination, you might save time by mixing other batches while the first are in the oven. According to my own experience and the way my brain functions… I had to prepare the dough and bake it on different days. My kitchen is now neater and more efficient thanks to this.
Put Christmas Cookie Boxes directly onto a cooling rack as they come out of the oven so that you may reuse the baking sheets. A batch can be chilled, stacked on a plate, or stored in a tupperware container by the time the next batch is ready to be served.
You should move on to this step if you need to decorate Christmas Cookie Boxes. Icing needs time to harden, so it’s probably best to schedule this activity earlier in the day. Only the gingerbread cookies got frosted, and that was the last thing I accomplished. With only a thin layer of royal icing, I piped on a simple outline. Some instructions recommend to wait a full day for royal icing to dry before packaging Christmas Cookie Boxes, but I only let mine two hours to harden before gently stacking them in their boxes. If you have detailed designs utilising more icing or are truly concerned about messing the design, you may want to leave them out overnight; just plan for this in your timeframe.
Avoid Obsessing Over Flaws
I got all of these cookies done, from preparing the first dough to packaging up the boxes, in one stress-free day. The trick? Just letting it go and not worrying about it being flawless. The photographs above will show you that my cookies are far from perfect. Many of them don’t look right; they’re the wrong size, shape, etc. Here’s the deal: when you pack a variety of cookies into a single box, the result is visually appealing.
When you put it in a lovely box with a ribbon on it and present it to someone, they are never going to worry that your cookies are different sizes or you made a mistake with the icing. They’ll be overjoyed to get something you made themselves. And the cookies are delicious, which is what really counts (just leave out the burnt ones, okay?). The most intricate Custom Christmas Boxes recipes are for those who seek perfection. however the time required will increase. If you’re going to spend the entire day in the kitchen, don’t forget to stop and eat… keep drinking water, etc.
Collect Your Suitcases
If you’re not sure if the container is acceptable for food or you just want to be safe, line it with parchment paper first. Made one box first, tweaked it till it looked good, and then made copies of it in an assembly line. I find it helpful to add visual interest by stacking cookies on their sides rather than their backs and at varying angles to make the box look more curated. I am in no way an expert on this topic; in fact, I wasn’t even really fond with how mine ended out. However, I do have some great ideas for improving my efforts next time around. As soon as you’re done, reseal the boxes to keep the Christmas Cookie Boxes fresh for as long as possible. This article provides great advice for delivering any of these items.
