Kitchen Gadget Girl Cooks

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Celebrating the holidays with cookies is one of my great joys, and even better, is sharing holiday treats with others! It is not too late to plan your own cookie exchange, here are two ways to organize yourself:

1. Sharing of the Cookies

This exchange works well when you have a large group of bakers, more than 8 or so. Invite each guest to bring one batch (usually 3-4 dozen) of their favorite holiday cookie. You can theme-it-up by asking them to bring a family favorite or something that is completely new. Also ask them to bring a dozen holiday treat bags with twist ties.

Lay all the cookies out on a large table and admire them while having a hot beverage (here is a recipe for a wonderful Hot Cranberry Cider) and a holiday treat. When all your guests are ready, invite them to retrieve their holiday treat bags. Ask each baker to describe what they have brought (if you have non-bakers coming, ask them to bring a bag of holiday candy or peppermint bark). Then go around with your bags and assemble collections of cookies.

These collections of cookies can be given out to neighbors, teachers, administrators at school, piano teachers, hairdressers, etc. Or, you can create a plate of cookies to keep at home and share when friends come to visit.

I have done this exchange with other moms from my children’s school and we have shared our bounty with important folks at school. This would also be a fun neighborhood or playgroup party idea. I set aside 1.5 hours for this party, on a morning early in the season.

2. A Dozen for All

I have been hosting this type of exchange for almost 8 years – I invite 6-8 friends (any more and it becomes painful for all involved), and ask each guest to bring 1 dozen of their cookies for every other guest. For example, this year there were 7 of us, so I asked everyone to bring 6 dozen of their cookies.

At this point, there are a couple ways you can run the program – you can ask your bakers to package each dozen individually, which is what I have done in the past. Or, you as the host can purchase enough large holiday tins or tubs and have your bakers bring their cookies in their own container. Then you can assemble tins/tubs for each guest, with the idea that they would bring the tin next year for a refill. This is a greener solution, cutting down on the packaging, but creating the beautiful packaging is more than half the fun!

When hosting this kind of party, I usually serve lunch or have another activity, such as tamale making or decorating cookies to donate. And because this is a holiday tradition, the party lasts a little longer, 2.5 – 3 hours.

Do you host a cookie party? If so, what is your plan?

 Happy Holidays!

From My Home to Yours

Meghan at AMomTwoBoys had a great idea to post our

holiday cards, rather than try to send them to

everyone through the mail.

And since I have made several new friends through

Kitchen Gadget Girl, and BlogHer and life,

I thought it was a great idea.

Best wishes to all of my blog friends and here’s to

awesome content, more comments, and rip roaring traffic in the New Year!

XOXO

Kitchen Gadget Girl

Another one of the interesting women I met at BlogHer 08 was Lydia, from the Perfect Pantry. Lydia, a professional food writer, lives in Rhode Island (my choice for my 5th grade state report!) and has been blogging for years, which makes her a great source of information.

This summer, she sent email about a program she designed with several other friends called Drop In & Decorate. The premise is simple – get a few friends together, decorate some cookies, then donate those cookies to a worthwhile organization in your neighborhood. I was so smitten with this idea that I vowed to make it happen this holiday season, with my own group of friends, on December 13th, as part of an annual cookie exchange party.

As my friends arrived, I put them to work – Erica and Marsha on making the frosting, Julie and Lisa washing tips, Pat and Marie catching up. Fortunately, Diddams was having a sale on Wilton items, so I had enough frosting tips for 9 pastry bags (kitchen gadgets!), more than enough for everyone. I had made the cookies last weekend, using the large, comfortable cookie cutters from Wilton (more kitchen gadgets!), and froze them until the party. I also had on hand loads of sprinkles and decorations.

The coloring of the frosting was humorous – we had a hard time getting strong, vibrant holiday colors. I remarked that perhaps we should be doing this around Easter, when pastel colors were acceptable. For the two batches of cookies, we made two batches of frosting, colored about 1/2 and left the other half white. We used disposable pastry bags with metal tips and plastic couplers, all from the Wilton cake decorating line.

Once all the frosting was ready, we got down to business. For the next 45 minutes, we decorated 90 cookies with frosting, decorations and love. Here are some of my favorite pictures:

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Later that evening, I packaged the cookies into individual bags (thank you Lydia!) and tied a ribbon around the top. The next morning, my kids helped me deliver the cookies to the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford.

Are you interested in doing something similar this holiday season? Check out the Drop In & Decorate blog for detailed instructions, including a downloadable plan. When we delivered the cookies, we all agreed that we had a warm spot in our heart – hope you can enjoy that same feeling this holiday season!

Today I posted on Uptake about Passports with Purpose, a travelblogger fundraiser to support Heifer International. The brain-child of four travel bloggers (Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby, Pam Mandel of Nerd’s Eye View, Michelle Duffy of WanderMom and Beth Whitman of Wanderlust and Lipstick) Passports with Purpose aims to raise money for Heifer, which supports programs to eliminate hunger and poverty around the globe.

Here is how it works:

• Visit Passports with Purpose and select the raffle item you are interested in (great raffle prizes have been donated by travel bloggers and sponsors, including Cooking Classes in NYC and a Culinary Tour of Greenwich Village!)
• Buy your raffle ticket with a donation to FirstGiving – be sure to specify which prize you are interested in when you donate.
• Tell all your friends.

Easy, peasey, lemon, squeezey. And the money goes to support Heifer International, whose mission is to help lift the world’s poorest people out of poverty, by giving them the means to support themselves. Through Heifer, families are given animals that can help stave off starvation and provide income. Even a small amount of money helps. $20 (the cost of two raffle tickets) purchases a flock of chicks who feed on scraps, but produce both food and income for a family. The goal of Passports with Purpose is to raise $5000 for Heifer International!

A complete list of prizes and more information about how to get involved is available at Passports with Purpose.

Thank you again to Witmer’s for generously sending two of their fabulous peanut butter mixers for the first-ever Kitchen Gadget Girl Gadget Giveaway. And after a week of anxious nail biting, I am thrilled to announce the two winners*:

Buttonwillow Six

and

Jen Maiser, of Life Begins at 30

Congratulations to both of you! And thank you to all who participated.

* Winners were chosen by an objective third-party using the random sequence number generator on Random.org.

See my original reviews of the Witmer Peanut Butter Mixer here and here.

Have you entered my very first kitchen gadget giveaway? It is not too late!

Today’s Cookie Thursday was given over to preparations for holiday cookie parties -  mixing dough and baking cutout cookies. I will freeze the cookies until next week, and pull them out in time to defrost and decorate next weekend. Fortunately, I have a new tool to use today, the BeaterBlade.

Thanks to the generosity of Biggie at Lunch in A Box, I purchased the BeaterBlade from Amazon. The BeaterBlade is an attachment for the KitchenAid Mixer that continuously scrapes the side and bottom of the bowl as you mix. I had first seen a similar product in RealSimple magazine last April, but the SideSwipe Spatula Mixer Blade was incompatible with my mixer, so I went with the BeaterBlade.

Today was my first test of the attachment – I chose a Cream Cheese Cutout Cookie recipe from my cousin Julie. My initial reaction is that the attachment is great, it does what it is supposed to do. Cream cheese dough is quite a bit thicker than a normal cookie dough, and the BeaterBlade seemed up to the task. It was best in the beginning when creaming the butter and cream cheese, and again after adding the sugar. Towards the end, when all the flour was incorporated, it seemed to have trouble scraping the sides of the bowl. But, by then, I did not care, everything was already well mixed.

I will test the attachment out a few more times this season, especially as I work through my holiday cookie list. So far, I would recommend this gadget for anyone who uses a KitchenAid Mixer. The BeaterBlade comes in several styles, for lift or tilt mixers.

Imagine my surprise when scanning through my dashboard, I noticed a link from Mommy Bits. Low and behold, I had won the Grand Prize in Mommy Bits Moving Day Giveaway.

Shannan, the self-described lone-woman in a testosterone-filled house of men, put together a wonderful prize package, including a Lands End Women’s Regular ThermaCheck® 100 Half-zip Pullover, a Brita / Filter For Good Gift Pack featuring a Brita water pitcher and a reusable (BPA-FREE) Filter For Good water bottle as seen on “The Biggest Loser,” five coupons good each for a FREE case of the environmentally friendly Primo Water and a gift card good for 50 FREE Snapfish.com Credits.

Outstanding prize package – the Lands End Pullover arrived the other day and is so soft and cuddly. I ordered it in Fresh Green, and my kids fight over who gets to wear it next. Also, they are only $25.50, which would be a great gift for someone on your list. Oh, but wait, it is not a kitchen gadget, I better be careful…

I met Shannan at BlogHer 2008, and so far, that conference has paid off in spades in terms of who I met and have continued to stay in touch with. I am honored to have won the grand prize and thank Shannan for being a great new blogger friend!

I am thrilled to announce the first-ever Kitchen Gadget Girl Gadget Giveaway! After posting last week about my Top 10 under $10 recommendations for the holidays, my new friend Bob at Witmer’s sent me two Peanut Butter Mixers, model #100, for me to give away to two (2) lucky winners. Need more details? Here you go:

What: The Kitchen Gadget Girl Gadget Giveaway

When: December 1 – December 5. Winners announced December 7, 2008.

How: Make a comment below, telling me your favorite way to enjoy peanut butter AND your favorite kitchen gadget (note, only complete comments will be eligible to win). Also, be sure to leave a way to contact you!

Yeah, that is all you have to do. But, you say, you want to do more? Well, then, for each of the following, you will get an extra entry:

• Tweet about the contest, mentioning The Kitchen Gadget Girl Giveaway
• Blog about the contest on your own blog
• Kirtsy, Digg, Stumble, or use any other announcement method you like

For all of these, you can either comment again, or shoot me email at kitchengadgetgirls at gmail dot com.

Remember, I have two of these lovely Peanut Butter Mixers, so the chances of winning are definitely greater (I am pretty sure I got my math right there!). Enter early, enter often.