Christmas Cookie Baking Party

Christmas Cookie Baking Party: ideas and printables for a baking party, a Christmas cookie exchange, or a gingerbread house decorating party.

One of my favourite holiday treats is Christmas cookies. They’re not your run of the mill everyday cookie, they’re somehow just a little bit more special and a little bit more yummy. Whether it’s shortbread, or gingerbread houses, or sugar cookies…the list could go on and on -they’re all so good! My family joined in for this fun Christmas cookie baking party and it was so much fun. I want to share all the details with you today and the printables too. This party would also be totally perfect for a gingerbread house making party, or a cookie exchange too, or for baking cookies for Santa Claus with your kids or as a Christmas cookie decorating party too.

Christmas Cookie Tradition

I come from a long line of Christmas cookie bakers. Christmas cookies are one of my favorite holiday traditions. When I was a kid it felt like my Grandma made a million different kinds. And there were special Christmas cookies, that only made an appearance once a year. I can remember my Grandma taking weeks to choose the recipes, and seeing magazines and recipes spread out on the dining room table. Then she had to assemble all the ingredients. And then there was the actual baking, which went on and one for days and days and days. Everytime you visited her before Christmas, there was a new Christmas cookie to sample. My mom too used to bake so much when we were little. I remember her making cut out shortbread, and decorating little reindeer, Santas, and bells with sugar sprinkles, cherries, and nuts. I don’t remember much sampling of my Mom’s cookies though. Everything seemed to get packaged up and tupperware and saved until Christmas.

Since Christmas cookies hold such special memories for me, I thought it would be fun to turn our Christmas cookie baking into a party this year. It would be perfect to create a sense of occasion for your family, or to invite Grandma over for, or some friends. I mean who doesn’t love a good cookie party, right?! It’s the perfect way to get into the holiday spirit. Put on the Christmas music, and let’s get baking!

Party Decorations

This collection of printables is my very favourite I think. No need to pick up decorations with your party supplies, purchase our printable set and print them at home on your printer, or at your office supply store. These are a great price and the cutest Christmas cookie party set ever. Use them for your cookie exchanges, cookie decorating party, gingerbread house party, or family baking this year. This “Home Sweet Home” poster couldn’t be cuter, and is such a favorite. I’ll be enjoying it the whole holiday season, and leaving it up as Christmas decor long after the baking party.

Milk and Cookies

Since cookie baking, decorating, and sampling is hard work, I wanted to include a little snack station for our party. To with our holiday cookie sampling, what could be a better fit than milk and cookies? I used some upcycled juice bottles as our milk bottles, and added our North Pole Milk and Cookies Co. label, just using a glue stick. It worked great and washes right off after the party. I love the vintage feel of the milk served in these bottles.

Other great options would be to have some coffee and tea available, which again is the perfect combo with a freshly baked cookie. Kids would love some hot cocoa. Set up a hot chocolate bar with some different hot chocolate add-ins like mini marshmallows, and whip cream for everyone to help themselves during the Christmas party.

The little straw flags for the milk come in the baking party set too and such a fun detail to add to paper straws.

We also designed this cute little flag pennant -purchase printable here. Just print, cut, and add to a wooden dowel with some hot glue. We added some pretty pink ribbon. These would be really adorable tucked into a stocking too. I love the soft colors of this printable collection and they paired perfect with our groupings of mini Christmas trees in pinks, and neutrals. We carried the trees over to the dining table too for an easy centerpiece for the party.

We made another fun option for the party decor with this “Baking Spirits Bright” banner. Just print, cut, and string onto some yarn or ribbon. We layered ours with a homemade pom pom garland for a fun stouch. Pom poms always make me think of a Santa hat this time of year.

Gingerbread House Treat Boxes

Since treats are for sharing, especially this time of year, we designed this adorable Gingerbread House Treat Box. You can print it at home on 2 sheets of card stock and then cut, fold, and glue it together all ready for gifting. This is such a festive way to share any Christmas cookies or other holiday treats with others. These make it easy to share the perfect Christmas cookies with neighbours, co-workers, teaches, coaches, friends, and family. These little gingerbread treat boxes are such an easy way to elevate a homemade gift.

These would also make great party favors for any holiday parties. Give them out at the end of the party as a fun take home gift. For a birthday party you could even fill them with cookie decorating supplies, like fun sprinkles and cookie cutters, and don’t forget the holiday treats like candy canes.

To close the top of the box, use a hole punch to create a hole and thread some pretty ribbon through.

We used the round labels in the printable set as gift tags. Just print and use a large circle punch to cut them out, and small hole punch to add a hole at the top for ribbon. These are perfect for gift giving this holiday season. These small round printables also work great as cupcake toppers. Print them, punch with a large circle punch, and then hot glue a toothpick to the back. Add them to cupcakes for the perfect coordinated holiday cupcakes.

DIY Christmas Aprons

We thought it would be fun to make some Christmas aprons for our little family party. I used aprons from the craft store and our Cricut machine to cut out iron on vinyl to make them.

We made “We whisk you a Merry Christmas” and “Baking Spirits Bright” aprons. The aprons are also available in children’s sizes at the craft store. How perfect would kid size aprons be for a little baking cookies for Santa family party with your kids. The things that magical memories are made of. Get the image as part of this party pack, and then use your Cricut to personalize aprons like we did, or tea towels, pot holders, or oven mitts.

These would also be a great addition to cookie decorating birthday parties. You could make one for each of the guests, as a beautiful take home gift, and even personalize it more with each child’s name.

And if you have any bakers on your Christmas gift, these make a wonderful personalized Christmas gift too. Imagine making a baking themed gift basket with all the necessary supplies for baking and a beautiful personalized apron. Perfect for spreading some Christmas holiday cheer this year!

Recipe Cards

I thought it would be nice to also include a printable recipe card for the party. These would be especially great as part of a cookie exchange party so that you could include the recipe with all of the different cookies.

These printable recipe cards would also be great addition to any Christmas treats you’re gifting this year so that the recipient could make them again. Or if you’re having a cookie decorating party, you could include the sugar cookie recipe -find my favorite sugar cookie recipe here, or your favorite gingerbread recipe.

Stations

Even for a small party, stations always work well. Make sure you have enough space to create different areas for groups to work. This was great for our cookie baking party. For a cookie exchange, you might have all the cookies layed out with labels and guests work their way through the stations collecting and trying the different cookies. If you’re having a cookie decorating party, you might have just the cookie decorating station, but with more options and different kinds of cookies to decorate. For a gingerbread decorating party, you could set up chairs around the table and have different decorations and candies in the middle, or individual containers for each guests. There’s so many different great ways to have a Christmas cookie party, and they’re all full of fun activities that young kids, older kids, and adults will all love.

Cookie Baking Station

We had a cookie dough station where we were cutting out cookies with cookie cutters in a variety of shapes for the holidays and getting them ready to bake in the oven. As one tray was finishing we were putting a new one in the oven. We made the cookie dough the day before and this allowed us to bake the cookies the day of the party, so they were nice and fresh.

Cookie Packing Station

We also had our cookie packing station where we packed up our cooled cookies into cello bags, and our gingerbread house treat boxes. Be sure to cool your holiday cookies on wire racks before packing them up. We used the small gift tags and they looked so great on our cello tags, and are were perfect for gift giving.

These are our favourite Toblerone shortbread cookies find the recipe here -but this time we replaced the Toblerone with chocolate chips. 😉

Cookie Decorating Station

And lastly we had a cookie decorating station -everyone’s favourite.

It’s such a fun idea to include at least special cookie recipe that is rolled out and be decorated. I put out different sprinkles into little containers and small bowls so that we could add them to our iced cookies. We also had some royal icing in some pastry bags for piping. Everyone had a great time decorating cookies together. We had gingerbread cookies cut into gingerbread men and other shapes. Sugar cookies are a great option too, especially if you want different types of cookies. You could also add to some gel food coloring to your cookie icing to create some different colors of icing for the decorated cookies.

You could even have a little friendly competition at this station and see how’s the best cookie decorator.

We had such a fun time baking and decorating together. It really got us all into the Christmas spirit. This is such a fun party to have around the holidays, whether it’s a family baking party like we had, a fun cookie exchange, a gingerbread house making party, or Christmas cookie decorating party. I hope you love our printable party set and that it helps you create the best Christmas cookie party ever. Happy party planning!

You can purchase the Christmas Baking Party Printable Set for this party in our Etsy shop here, or get the set as part of our Home For Christmas Ebook and Printable Toolkit here.