We’re heading to a holiday cookie exchange on Saturday (hence my cry for help on Facebook) that I’m really excited about. Our friends thought this type of party would be a great way to mobilize a bunch of people to help the community while having a lot of fun in the process. I could babble on, but I think I’ll just cut and paste the invite instead so you can see the details for yourself. Feel free to use it as a template for your own party!
We invite you to join us for our annual cookie exchange. Our hope is to again send you home with a wonderful assortment of delicious holiday cookies while at the same time working together to help make the holidays a bit better for others in our community.
COOKIES
The idea is for you to take home about half of the cookies you bring. Together, we will put the other half into individual tins to be delivered to seniors and shut-ins. So bring as many cookies as you want to bake! And if you do not care to bake nor to take home any cookies, please just bring more of the items needed for the food pantry.
FOOD PANTRY
We are also asking for your help with gathering items for local food pantries. Listed below are those items which they need most.
Beans + Rice: We hope that as many of you as possible will bring large bags of black beans (10#), pinto beans (20#) and/or rice (20#), all of which may be purchased at Costco. We will then work together to break down the large bags into smaller individual bags, which saves the food pantries a great deal of volunteer labor.
Senior bags: The Healdsburg food pantry assembles bags for about 35 seniors in our community and they are always in need of the following items in individual packages:
- fruit/breakfast bars (soft to chew)
- instant oatmeal packets
- fruit and/or pudding cups
- hot cocoa
- bar soap or soft soap in pump bottles
- toothbrushes and toothpaste
- cereal
- jello + boxed pudding
- macaroni + cheese
- tuna fish
- low sodium soups
- peanut butter
- dish detergent
- toileteries: shampoo, conditioner, mouthwash, deodorant
- tea and coffee-individual sizes (like Starbucks)
We look forward to spending a fun and rewarding afternoon together and thank you in advance for your generous souls.
How cool is that? I’m bringing these oatmeal cookies as one of my contributions and would LOVE to know your favorite cookie/bar/brownie recipe. Leave a link below or on Facebook!
Need more creative cookie ideas? Alison recently when to a cookie exchange hosted by Food Bloggers Los Angeles. Here are some more recipes from our creative friends at FBLA:
FBLA 2013 Cookie Exchange Recipes
- Chai Tea Cookies — Cathy Arkle of She Paused 4 Thought (She also got tired of rolling the dough and refashioned the rest into Baby Hedgehog cookies.)
- Butter Pecan Fudge — Dorothy Reinhold (me!) from Shockingly Delicious.
- Antioxidant Chocolate Bark — Erika Kerekes (our hostess) of In Erika’s Kitchen.
- Sweet Potato Marshmallow Bars with White Chocolate Chips — Jennifer Richmond of Kitchy Cooking.
- Chocolate Chip and Apricot Walnut Rugelach and Vegan Chocolate Mini Cupcakes (“Naughty & Nice Cookies”) — Dana of Foodie Goes Healthy
- Vintage Sponge Drops with Double Fudge Filling — Leslie Macchiarella of Bake This Cake.
- Sicilian Christmas cookies — Judy Lyness of Two Broads Abroad.
- Cranberry Orange Walnut Sugar Cookies — Patricia Rose of Fresh Food in a Flash.
- Brown Butter Praline Chocolate Chip Cookies — Valentina Wein of Cooking On The Weekends.
- Mini Chocolate Nut Sandwich Cookies — Kelly Page of Tasting Page.
- Rosemary Raisin Cocktail Shortbread — Sharon Graves of Cheesy Pennies.
- Saketini Christmas Balls, Chocolate Macarons with Japanese Wine Cream Centers, and Matcha Green Tea Cookies with Chocolate Centers & Espresso Cookies with Caramel Fillings — Kim Watkinson of Ninja Baking.
- Blueberry Coconut Mini Cupcakes, Rainbow Chocolate Bark, and Vegan Gingersnaps — Judy Weintraub of Bumbleberry Breeze.
- Chocolate-Dipped Apricots with Pistachios — Adair Seldon of Lentil Breakdown.
- Spumoni Shortbread — Nancy Rose Eisman of Adventures with Nancy Rose.
- Crispy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies and Cardamom Gingersnap Cookies — Alison Ashton of NOURISH Evolution .
- Gluten-Free Pumpkin Oat Bars — Alanna Waldron of Eats Real Food.
- Red Velvet Gooey Butter Cookies — Tanaya Ghosh of Tanaya’s Table. (Tanaya’s Table, the blog, will launch in 2014.)
- Black and White Cookies — Tina Kil. (Her blog isn’t up yet, but watch for her contributions in the future!)
Non-Cookie Items
- Chiang Mai Chicken in Endive Spears — Cathy Arkle of She Paused 4 Thought.
- Seasonal salad — Nancy Rose Eisman of Adventures with Nancy Rose.
- Barrel-Aged Sazerac — Jennifer Richmond of Kitchy Cooking.