Teresa’s Bake Shop – Christmas Cookie Extravaganza – 2017

Merry Christmas everyone! Well, here they are! All the cookies from our Christmas Cookie Extravaganza – 2017. I have all kinds of cookies this year. Apricot, Cherry, Pumpkin, lemon, Snickerdoodle, one with macadamia nuts and vanilla chips, two with Raspberry flavors, two with Strawberry flavors, Gingerbread, three with Oreo flavors, Butterfinger, two with funfetti flavors, three that were gluten free and loads with chocolate!

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On top of that, my favorite this year was the Fruitcake Cookie. Fruitcake you say??? Ugh! No, not this one. This Fruitcake Cookie is amazing and you’ll never even realize you’re eating fruitcake mix if someone didn’t tell you. I was amazed at how many people at our church’s Christmas in Ovilla celebration also loved them.

I have 20 delicious cookies to share with you this year. All tried, true and approved recipes that everyone loved. I have had great feedback from every single cookie! If you need some inspiration for your Christmas cookie baking this year or next year, then consider some of these delicious cookies from our Christmas Cookie Extravaganza – 2017 list this year.

Here’s the process.

Each batch of cookie dough made about 250-300 cookies. Most of the time, I would put about five batches of dough into two very large stainless steel bowls like this one. I have a couple of really strong spoons used to stir the dough. It’s important to make sure the dough is stirred thoroughly when making these large batches.

Sometimes we had to chill the dough. In this recipe for Berry Shortbread Dreams, we found it necessary to chill the dough after rolling it into balls too. That made the dough easier to work with.

Here’s a batch of Gingerbread White Chocolate Cookies ready to be bagged.

Here’s the Berry Shortbread Dreams after I’ve baked the cookies and drizzled them with icing.

Here I’m taking Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies off the cookie sheets and transferring them to racks.

Here’s a batch of the Funfetti White Chocolate Sandwiches before I put them together with icing.

Here’s a rack of Gluten Free Funfetti Cookies after I iced and decorated them.

After the cookies are baked I place them in poly bags that come on a roll. These are Best Oreo Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Here I’m getting ready to bag the Oreo-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies. This is how I set up my table.

Here I’m pulling the bags from the roll and placing a Gingerbread White Chocolate Cookie into a bag.

The Strawberry White Chocolate Cookie is in the poly bag.

Here’s one of the Gluten Free Funfetti Cookies going into a bag. Iced cookies are a lot harder to slide into the bags because they’re gooey. I have to allow the icing to set before bagging them.

Once I’ve bagged the Gluten Free Funfetti Cookies, I place and stack them on trays.

Here I’m in the process of bagging Best Oreo Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Here’s a batch of Strawberry White Chocolate Cookies ready to be sealed.

After I have a tray of bagged cookies ready, I start sealing the cookies. It’s best to seal the cookies as close as possible to the cookie with only a half-inch gap or so.

After going through the heat sealer, I tear off the top and discard it in the trash.

After sealing the bags I stack them again in another tray. These are the Gluten Free Funfetti Cookies.

After the bags are sealed I place labels on them. We had several friends tell us several years ago they had difficulty figuring out what each cookie was so they enjoy having labels. It also helps our recipients track the ingredients in the recipe to make sure they don’t have nuts or other ingredients for people with food allergies.

Here you can see a sheet of the labels. I was working on Butterfinger Chocolate Chip Cookies.

After sealing the bags, I place them in zip lock bags and put them in the freezer.

Then when I’m ready to make up the baskets and trays I set them out on my kitchen counters.

Each foil pan contains the same kinds of cookies. Some of them have multiple bags of the same cookie. Others have two kinds of cookies depending on the bulk of the cookie. I’ve pulled them out of all my freezers in order to start loading up the buckets.

I made up 156 bags of cookies for our neighborhood. Each bag had a baker’s dozen of cookies, a personal letter from us, recipes, and a Christmas devotional book called The Christmas Code.

Here’s the top of the bag.

Here’s a copy of The Christmas Code.

Here I’ve set out the buckets. Under the bucket is a copy of the all the cookie recipes.

Here are the popcorn tins. I also had about 20 trays.

Here the buckets are packed. I top them with a batch of recipes before adding the lid and a personal label.

Here’s what some of the trays looked like. 

Here’s a close up of one of the buckets.

Here’s what the inside of the popcorn tins looked like. We purchase popcorn tins and remove the popcorn, before washing and reusing them for cookies. The tin does a good job of protecting the cookies for shipping. We pack the popcorn tins into 12″ boxes and fill them with styrofoam popcorn to add more protection for shipping. 

Bring on the cookies!

Christmas Cookie Extravaganza – 2017

Apricot White Chocolate Cookies

Berry Shortbread Dreams

Best M&M Oreo Cookies

Best Oreo Chocolate Chip Cookies

Butterfinger Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cherry Almond White Chocolate Cookies

Coconut Date Balls

English Lemon Shortbread Strips

Fruitcake Cookies

Funfetti White Chocolate Sandwiches

Gingerbread White Chocolate Cookies

Gluten Free Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Gluten Free Funfetti Cookies

Oreo-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

Pumpkin Chip Cookies

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Raspberry Shortbread Bars

Snickerdoodle Cheesecake Bars

Strawberry White Chocolate Cookies

Strawberry Shortbread Bars

White Chip Island Cookies