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Bake Cookies Day occurs in the middle of the holiday season, and is a great excuse to bake some delicious cookies to help you get through the cold, winter days! Why not try some cinnamon flavored cookies (such as the snickerdoodle) to get your kitchen smelling of winter festivities? Or there’s always the classic ‘sugar cookie’ with brightly colored royal icing, silver candy balls and sprinkles, cut into a myriad of seasonal shapes.
Bake Cookies Day is your excuse to indulge in the art (and eating) of cookies of every stripe and measure, especially those that remind you of the season.

History of Bake Cookies Day

Cookies arrived in America in the 17th century, although the word arrived much later with the Dutch in its original form of “koekje”, meaning “little cake”. This was soon shortened to “cooky” or “cookie”, although cookies themselves seem to date back as far as 7th century Persia! Since then they’ve become a global phenomena that come in more varieties, flavors, and styles than you can possibly imagine.

From fruit filled cookies to the simple but delectable sugar cookie (Yep, got a sugar cookie fixation, tis the season!), these “little cakes” are simply the most amazing thing to come out of an oven since bread· Every year people get together to celebrate Bake Cookies Day by baking dozens of cookies for charity drives, orphanages, and generally bringing joy to family and friends everywhere.

How to celebrate Bake Cookies Day

The most obvious way of celebrating is to bake up a batch or seven of your favorite cookies· Whether it’s one dozen or 12 Bake Cookies Day is the day to get everything together and fill your house with the joy of the holidays·

Now, if you’re looking to do more, than you can organize a charity bake-off where people pay a small fee to come in and sample all the cookies and vote on them, and the prize goes to a charity of the winners choice· Nobody hates cookies, so at the end of the day you’re sure to have a successful event· For those who don’t know how to bake cookies, allow me to introduce you to my favorite… Sugar cookies!

  • 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
  • 1 cup butter or margarine, softened
  • ½ t almond extract
  • 1 egg
  • 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 t baking soda
  • 1 t cream of tartar

Mix together the powdered sugar, butter, vanilla, almond extract, and egg in a large bowl· Stir in the rest once this is blended· Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours· Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F, divide the dough in half, roll out to a ¼” thick sheet· Apply cookie cutters to get desired shape, and bake for 7-8 minutes until the edges are light brown.

Done!

Cookies come in all different shapes and sizes – and flavours. Think of a gingerbread man, or woman, that’s a cookie! So is a macaroon, that light, layered, yummy, coconut-y biscuit.

When it comes to making cookies the imagination is the limit. Some of the best well known have been invented by creative bakers with an interest in breaking the mold. The chocolate chip cookie, for instance, was invented by Ruth Graves Wakefield and Sue Brides in 1938, whilst they owned a popular inn in Massachusetts. Their inn featured home baking and they wanted to try something new. Aren’t we all glad they did.

Experimenting with the cookie cutter, and with your ingredients is a fun way to generate interest in your cookies and get people sharing. But how easy is it to do? After all classic hits like the chocolate chip cookie don’t emerge from the oven every day. Truthfully, inventing cookies is an arduous business, at least it was for Ruth and Sue, who didn’t have the benefit of so many tried and tested formulas. They had to rely on trial and error.

Luckily you don’t have to waste tons of ingredients experimenting with yours. Simply choose a cookie recipe from an easy to use cookbook and follow it. The trick here is to tweak the recipe to your liking, or wherever your adventurous mind wants to go; as long as you get the basics of your recipe right, your experimental cookie will turn out A-ok!

The Gift Of Cookies

Cookies are made to be shared. No-one wants to eat a whole batch of cookies on their own like a blue furry monster with a big appetite. It’s so good when a friend or stranger takes a bite of a cookie we’ve made, and loves it! Even better if said cookie was invented by our own ideas.

Bake Cookies Day is the perfect excuse to have a gathering. Invite your friends and family round to help you bake up a few batches of a traditional recipe, or an invented one. Stay out of the cold and warm yourself up with hot chocolate and pumpkin spice lattes.

These winter favorites are ideal companions to a batch of cookies fresh from the oven.

Share the love. It might seem a bit strange at first, but your neighbours will remember the warm-hearted gesture if you deliver a box of homemade cookies to them on Bake Cookies Day. If you can’t share cookies today, then when can you?

Since you pour your heart and soul into the making of delicious, inventive cookies, why not make your efforts go further. It’s the season of gifting after all. Instead of battling crowds in the shopping mall and stressing over what to buy friends and family for Christmas, choose a decorative box and fill it with spicy, seasonal delights. Instead of just cookie day, it rolls out and becomes cookie season.

Inspiration

Remember Bake Cookies Day doesn’t have to be only one day of the year. Use it as a springboard to inspire your baking imagination at other times of the year as well; after all, different seasons require different cookies.

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