Thrifty Holiday Party Ideas – A Ginger Bread Cookie Decorating Party…

One of my most favorite holiday parties was a cookie-decorating party that a friend hosted at her place last year. She called a few youth shelters and organizations, and offered to deliver some hand-decorated cookies to their centers for the holidays. Our job? To meet up, drink some spiced wine, chat and decorate cookies to our hearts delight.

Admittedly, after a few glasses of wine, our cookies did NOT look professional – in fact some of them were downright embarrassing! But it didn’t matter. It was such a fun, warm party and tying in the good cause was a gift in and of itself. So, I’m spreading the idea out to everyone for the holidays, because who wouldn’t want to do some good around Christmas, and have a great time doing it?

And there’s added good karma in this type of party as well – keep it simple with cookies, snacks and spiced wine, and you will definitely save a bundle without compromising on having a really fun and memorable party.

So, how do you plan such a winning occasion?

Here are a few tips.

Make your cookies the day before.
This is a cookie-decorating party – not a cookie-baking party. And usually for Christmas, gingerbread cookies are the standard. You can make them from scratch using some no-fail recipes from cookie gurus like Martha Stewart (her website www.marthastewart.com is a haven for projects like these) and the top chefs on www.foodnetwork.com.

Or, if you really want to save time (and some money), try the ready made refrigerated gingerbread cookie dough that is now available in most grocery stores. If you go to a special store like Trader Joe’s, you might find a frozen cookie-dough version as well.

Another thing to note, is that you could make this a cookie-baking party. No decorating ( both might get to be too laborious for a party), but just different types of cookies. In that case, feel free to go wild with your favorites! But, just be weary because expenses for this type of baking might really add up – unless you ask people to bring ingredients and pitch in, which they’re likely to want to do since it IS for a good cause. Try it! See how it goes. You can always tweak this idea until you get it down to a plan that works well. And once it does, you can host this low cost, new Christmas tradition every year.

Decorate and drink.
Mulled wine is a nice drink to offer with baked goods, because we all know you’re going to be sampling some of these treats as you make them – especially the cookies that look more like a ghost than a snowman after you’re done decorating them. SO, make sure to offer some hot cocoa or hot cider and some spiced wine.

Recipezaar.com offers a great spiced wine recipe here.

Now, when it comes to decorating, that’s pretty much a freestyle art if you ask me, especially if it’s several people decorating different shapes of cookies. Let your guests have fun with it, but you might want to print out some standard “looks” to act as a guide, so at least some of the kids can recognize the treats as

“Christmas Cookies”

Once the party’s over, you can pack up your cookies in cute gift bags or tins from the dollar store, and start making your deliveries to the youth centers. How’s that for a gift of giving?