Best Cookies for A Christmas Cookie Swap

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We've got you covered if you're looking for the best cookies for a Christmas cookie swap or holiday cookie exchange. We knew this very important cookie task was too much for us to handle alone so we called in our cookie troops...the sweet bakers on our Bakers Party Shop Design Team. They'll show you some of the most festive and fun Christmas cookies that will take your cookie swap parties to the next level! These ladies knocked the hat off Frosty's head with their holiday cookies. They're sharing some of their favorite decorated sugar cookies, cookie decorating ideas + tips and even a family recipe for cherry coconut chocolate chip cookies. Grab a cookie or two, a cup of tea and get ready to take notes or pin for later!

We had so much fun picking out products for each of our design team members to use in their Christmas cookie swap cookie project. The goal was to use our baking supplies to help make cookies that you'd want to take to a Christmas cookie swap or cookie exchange. This time of year doesn't that sound like the best party to be invited to...a cookie party where you get to take cookies home with you! We were thrilled to see what each of them came up with and hope they inspire you to host a cookie swap party and try making some of the cookies showcased here. Take it away sweet ladies...

Amanda of Eleven Fifteen Bake Co: Cookie Swaps should be fun and stress free! Sweet Sugarbelle Cookie Cutters take the intimidation and guesswork out of designing and executing the cutest, sweetest cookies. I used her Here Comes Santa cookie cutter set that has shapes that doubles as others like all of her cutter do. The set includes a Santa head, nutcracker head, candy cane and reindeer plus a template that shows you other ways you can decorate each cutter. The multi tree cookie cutter was so versitle and I made festive trees, elf heads and a gingerbread house...all from the same cutter that lets you cut out 4 cookies at a time. These cookies were so much fun to make and {almost} too pretty to eat! By the end of your cookie swap you'll have irresistible cookies anyone would be excited to take home! Speaking of taking home...stay tuned for the next blog post where I'll show you how to pack up your Christmas cookies in style!

Christie of Ritzy Parties: Creating iced sugar cookies for Christmas is one of my all time favorite pastimes especially as it becomes cookie season right after Thanksgiving. When I think of a cookie swap I think of lots of cookies so I decided it would be fun to make mini cookies...and a lot of them. That way my friends could pick out a variety of shapes and I got to have a blast decorating them. I love the Sweet Sugarbelle Very Merry Mini Christmas cookie cutters. The shapes are the perfect size for creating quick batches of stunning, royal-icing frosted little cookies, which are just the right size for gifting. The cookies are iced with ready to use royal icing, which was a HUGE time saver. This will help you get to the fun part of decorating without the extra step and mess of mixing royal icing. The final element was adding a dash of Sprinklefetti Christmas sprinkle mix to some of the cookies. This fun holiday sprinkle blend is filled with gingerbread men, snowflakes, red, green and white sugar pearls, hearts, jimmies, sugars, nonpareils, Christmas trees, holly leaves and even little candy cane sprinkles (and more)! It's like Christmas in a jar...and it saves you from buying separate jars of each style unless you want to...because one can never have too many sprinkles right?! Wait to you see all the fun ways I packaged them up for gift giving!

Lexi of My Batter Fingers: Man oh man I love holiday cookie season. I may not be a seasoned cookie decorator but I am certainly great at eating them. I've been working up to sugar cookie decorating skills and I'm so pleased with how these adorable cookies using the Meri Meri Christmas Cutters came out. I was so excited to see the nontraditional shapes like rainbows and mushrooms in the Mini Christmas cookie cutter set. I'm not really a traditional gal in any sense so I chose to make my color scheme a little different too. There is a great Santa and reindeer cookie cutter set that are larger and I decided Santa needed a makeover and pink is always a good option. The third set I used was a sweet woodland cookie cutter set that gives you a larger mushroom than in the mini set, a deer and a cool shaped tree. I had fun not only with the colors but with adding embellishments with a variety of sprinkles. I scoped out Bakers Party Shops nonpareil section. Did you know they have over 100 colors of solid colored nonpareils?! I was able to get all the colors I needed to go with my unique almost vintage Christmas color scheme. The biggest tip I can give you when decorating cookies is to TAKE YOUR TIME and plan it out in advance. I always write down all the cookie shapes and which colors I'm using where so I know how much icing I need to make. Now, because I love cookies so much, I couldn't just stop at sugar cookies.

Every cookie swap has tons of varieties of cookies and I had to make at least one more kind. I went with my mom's snickerdoodles recipe. I follow her recipe exactly each time, down to the last quarter teaspoon of salt and they still never taste quite the same. Something something motherly love in the mix. So, of course, to make them even more festive and add my own dash of love, I dipped them in white chocolate and coated them in various nonpareils (my faves) and white sprinklefetti sprinkle mix. The two cookie types complement each other great! Wait until you see how I packaged them up with more festive products from Meri Meri. That's coming in the next blog post and if you'd like I'll even share my mom's snickerdoodle recipe too. Leave a comment on the post if you are interested in it.

Tip: Don't forget to taste test along the way! (yum)

Brittanie of Brittanie Bakes: One of my favorite traditions this time of year is a good ol' fashioned Cookie Swap! When everyone brings a bunch of their favorite cookies to share, you know you're going to go home with tons of amazing treats. The only thing that makes that better is when you're swapping with amazing bakers! My contribution to our BPS hosted Christmas Cookie Swap are these in truck and tree sugar cookies and a forest of evergreen trees! While it might seem like a daunting task for any cookier newbies, an easy solution if you want to try your hand at decorated cookies is to focus on making the triangular trees made with Sweet Sugarbelle's multi tree cookie cutter. The key to this look is to decorate them upside down, with the "top" of the tree pointing at you. I decorated these using a squeeze and drag style, then overlapped as I went down. Multiple shades of the same color give dimension, and when paired with cute plaque cookies or the more detailed trucks, the end results are sure to get you those "oooh"s and "ahhh"s at your Christmas Cookie Swap! So you can decorate a few show stopper cookies if you are more skilled at cookie decorating and if you want something a little easier to decorate (but still gorgeous) try replicating my tree cookies. You can't go wrong with either or both! Wait until you see how I packaged up my cookies in a brand new cookie box kit that is coming soon!

Leanne of May and Marie Baking Co: For our Christmas cookie swap, I chose to bake and share one of our wonderful family recipes! I really wanted to make these “Cherry Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies” because they remind me of my grandmother, they were her favorite cookies around the holidays. These flavorful and delicious cookies are always one of the most requested cookies for our family to make and we hope that you get to enjoy them as much as we do! They would be the perfect addition to a cookie swap and the color of the cherries makes them extra festive for the holiday season. Wait until you see the cute way I packaged them up for gift giving...because the best gift you can give is something made with love!

Cherry Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe:

1 cup softened butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp almond extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups flaked coconut
1 1/2 cups maraschino cherries (drained and coarsely chopped)

Pre-heat oven to 350°F

Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl until well blended. Add eggs and extract, beating on medium speed until light and creamy (about 2 minutes). Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl. Gradually add to creamed mixture, beating on low speed just until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips and coconut, adding the cherries last.

Drop by small spoonfuls onto greased baking sheets and bake for about 12-15 minutes or until lightly-browned around the edges.

Tip: Leave a little bit of the moisture in your cherries if you want the cookies to have a pink-hue. If not, let the cherries rest and “dry” slightly on paper towels before mixing in.

We hope these help inspire your Christmas cookie making and to giving a go at hosting your own Christmas Cookie Swap! Our design team will be showing you how to package up holiday cookies in our next post on Thursday!

Special Offer: Now through Friday 11/22 at 11:59pm (est) you can save 25% off all the cookie cutters in our Christmas Cookie Cutters section of our shop with code: COOKIETIME25. Enter in the discount box that appears during the final step at checkout to get the savings. It's our way to help you with your holiday baking!

Happy holiday baking!
Bakers Party Shop and our Sweet Design Team

The forward + closing are written by Esther of Bakers Party Shop, wording and photos by the sweet ladies on our Design Team. If you share a photo from our post a link must be displayed back to this post and credit given to Bakers Party Shop. All photos in this post and content are copyright of Bakers Party Shop and our Design Team Members, 2019 All rights reserved.

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6 comments


  • Johneris Nin

    Oh my all those cookies look amazing, so many talented bakers, can’t wait to see them all wrapped up.❤


  • Everyday Sprinkles

    I am in love with all the cookies!! I can’t wait to try this new cookie recipe! Thank you for sharing!!❤💚🎄🎅🎁🎀


  • Amanda P.

    This totally puts me in the spirit! What great ideas! I’m excited to try that cookie recipe!


  • Lexi Tom

    Love how this post turned out!! I’m inspired by all these other cookies and those cherry ones have me drooling!!! Such a fun post!


  • Amanda

    All of these cookies look amazing and inspire me! I can’t wait to see them all packaged up!


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