Great Cookies for a Cookie Swap - or for Santa

If I've got my calendar straight, this week should be crazy busy with shopping, holiday parties and cookie exchanges.  Cookie exchanges, for those of you who've never been to one, are a wonderful American invention in which every guest is asked to bring large quantities of his or her favorite cookie, so that the delicious cookies can be exchanged for everyone else's delicious cookies.  If all goes right, at the end of a good cookie swap you go home with a fabulous variety of oodles of great cookies. 

I recently created four cookie-swappable recipes for AARP The Magazine - including Almond and Currant Tea Cakes, Coffee-Hazelnut Biscotti, Sweet and Savory Roll-ups (think savory rugelach) and the pictured Cherry and Spice Brownie Bites - and, just for good measure, I added the recipe for my all-time favorite World Peace Cookies.  I also included some tips for hosting an exchange.

If you jump on this idea now, you might be saved when Santa comes down the chimney looking for his milk and cookies.

This photo was taken by Jim Franco.

Comments

[Dorie]

Sorry to be so slow in responding. Where does time go? And does it go faster in France? I think so.

Erin, I hope your chicken and cookies meal was a great success. You've now made two of my favorite recipes - hope they'll become favorites of yours, too.

Chris, I'm so late answering that you've probably already made the teacakes in a million sizes - sorry. Yes, the cakes can be made in larger muffin tins, but since they're dense, kind of like a pound cake, they might be a bit filling in large size.

Maria, I hope you came home with great cookies - I know that everyone who got your cookies had to have been wildly happy.

Rosa, I bet you could get away with calling the World Peace Cookies a Canadian specialty. You're so lovely to bring your vendors sweets.

JEP - hope you enjoy the sweets. The nutrition info is a standard feature of aarp -- they do the analysis on every recipe they run -- and I must say that sometimes I'm happy to have it and sometimes, well, I just close my eyes and pretend it's not there.

Anali - I couldn't be happier that you're loving the cookies. As I've said before, I adore the World Peace Cookies and think they deserve their name totatly and completely.

[Anali]

Your World Peace Cookies changed my baking world. Thank you!

[JEP]

What a terrific post today! I have my eye on the brownies & World Peace Cookies. Thanks for the nutrition info, too!

[Rosa]

Thanks Dorie! I think I'll hand those World Peace cookies out to the market vendors on Saturday. Maybe I'll pretend it's a traditional Canadian recipe :-).

[Maria]

I love cookie exchanges! We had one at work this year. It is fun getting new recipes and of course the tasting is fun:) Thanks for sharing your recipes!

[Chris]

Could the teacakes be made in larger muffin tins?

[erin]

i made the dough for your world peace cookies this afternoon, and just popped your chicken in a pot into the oven a few minutes ago. thanks for your delicious recipes!