Hosting a Stress-Free Cookie Decorating Party

Ever want to host a holiday party but then you remember: You'll have to clean the house, buy food, prepare the food, serve the food, hope your guests like the food, clean up any potential messes made and in doing so, pretend like you're not even a little sad your favorite *insert item here* got broken or stained? Don't get me wrong, I love to host people in my home and am happily prepared for all of the above scenarios. But sometimes stress-free is nice! Enter the cookie decorating party.

I really believe a lot of whether hosting is stressful or not is up to you and even who you choose to bring into your home. Recently, I had a cookie decorating party with a few of my friends, and it was so fun. The best part is, making a mess is half the point here! So prepare to snack on some sprinkles and sneak a little frosting; you're certainly invited.

Here are my stress-free cookie decorating party (phew, that's a mouthful!) suggestions:

Like I mentioned, embrace the mess! But I've got a few tips to avoid getting royal icing all over everything. You can put piping bags on a dish when they're not in-use, in case they leak out the top (they likely will). I also had some luck with putting a few colors of icing in plastic condiment bottles, which are surprisingly easy to work with. The only con to some of the plastic bottles is you won't be able to get as fine of detail work from it, depending on the size of the cap. Go simple with decor, and don't over think it! The cookies will add enough visual interest to your table.

Ask all of your guests to bring a certain amount of cookies (for this event with just a few friends, I asked them to bring 12). That way, you're not having to bake a billion cookies, and you'll get more variety in flavors, style and cute cookie cutters! A good way to determine how many cookies to have each pal to bring is to decide what number of decorated cookies you'd like everyone to leave with. Then, ask everyone to bring that number. You can trade around cookies so each person has enough of a fun variety to decorate! It's always a good idea to have another batch on-hand, but this will save you a lot of baking and kitchen time.

In my opinion, wax paper is the best for fielding potential icing explosions. It's easy to use, nonstick and when you're finished, you can just toss it for easy cleanup. I put some paper placemats under the wax paper for this event, but I also think it could be cute to layer wax paper on brown craft paper.

Have some salty snacks and beverages available to help cope with the sugar rush. Cheese is always a good idea, in my opinion. ☺️And... that's about it! 

I hadn't really decorated cookies since I was a kid, and it's SO much more fun when you're an adult with better fine motor skills, ha! It's also super inspiring if your friends are as artistic as mine.

Most of the cookies in these photos were decorated by Kelsey Baldwin, who you can read more about here. (She's amazing!)

P.S. I wouldn't say I'm an expert on royal icing cookies, but I used this recipe for my sugar cookies and this one for my icing. I had to add quite a bit of water to the icing recipe to get it to be the right texture. 

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Friendsgiving Toll House Pie

I have no idea where the name "Friendsgiving" came from, who came up with the idea, or why we haven't started calling the fourth Thursday in November "Familygiving." 

This whole "Friendsgiving" thing has gotten pretty trendy over the last couple years, and I personally think it's great. Thanksgiving may very well be my favorite holiday, so I'm not mad about having a little extra community over turkey and stuffing. My family has a looooong tradition (over 30 years) of going to a friend's house for Thanksgiving, so I guess you could say my parents were the original Friendsgiving hipsters.

I love our family Thanksgiving traditions. We tell the same stories each year, but they never get old. We usually see a movie (we had some great years when all of the Harry Potter movies came out in late November), and we always have pie. You knew I'd get around to talking about the pie eventually…

So, here it is. Toll House Pie. If you've never heard of it, it's like a chocolate chip cookie pie. If you've never tasted it, it's incredible. 

I'm not sure if this is the original recipe for toll house pie, but this is my mom's recipe, so it's the only one you'll need. 

Ingredients

- 2 eggs

- 1/2 cup flour

- 1/2 cup sugar

- 1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

- 3/4 cup butter, melted & cooled

- 1 cup sumisweet chips

- 1 cup chopped walnuts

- unbaked pie crust

Recipe

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. In a large bowl, beat eggs until foamy. Don't do like I did and drop half the egg into the sink on accident, but if you do, use another egg.

The chocolate chips are the best part of this pie, but it's not time to add them yet. After beating the eggs, beat in the flour, sugar, and brown sugar until well blended. Beat in the melted butter. Finally (FINALLY!), stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts. If you don't like walnuts, I suppose you could remove them from the recipe, but I recommend you learn to like walnuts and leave 'em in.

Pour the mixture into pie shell, and set the oven timer for 55 minutes. It's a long time, I know, but it's worth the wait. 

Serve warm to friends or family, with whipped cream on top. 

I hope you all have the loveliest giving season of all!

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Caramel Apple Parfait

This post was inspired by wisdom teeth surgery (ow), McDonald's, and all the girls longing for fall.

Spoiler alert: It's still summer until September 22. I know we all want it to be fall, like, yesterday, but I personally really love summer. So, this treat is a summery snack/dessert/breakfast (or dessert for breakfast) option for those of us who are enjoying summer yet longing for the upcoming crunchy leaves and caramel apple season.

So, back to wisdom teeth. I had 'em removed recently, and as you likely know, I wasn't allowed to eat anything afterward. I mean, I could eat ice cream, and soup, and parfaits, but that's about it. I couldn't eat apples, or pretzels, or heaven forbid I try to eat a hamburger. It was a low point in my life.

So one day I'm eating a McDonald's Fruit 'n Yogurt Parfait, and I decided it wasn't half-bad! (Did I just lose all of my "food blogger" internet cred?) I got to thinking about how I could make an at-home version of the snack, but with a twist.

Ingredients:

- 1 cup vanilla yogurt
- Apples, chopped (I used Granny Smith and Red Delicious)
- Pretzel crumbs
- Caramel

Little bit of trivia: "Parfait" got it's name from the French word for "perfect," and their origin dates all the way back to 1894. Parfaits are different all around the world, too. Don't order a parfait in the UK unless you want "a very smooth meat paste (or pâté), usually made from liver (chicken or duck) and flavoured with liqueurs." (Ew, right?) But this recipe won't be like that. It'll be good. Promise.

The best thing about parfaits is that they're so easy to make. That's probably why the French deemed them perfect. They're a quick-fix for a sweet tooth. Or if you're like me, a sweet+salty tooth.

Instructions:

Start by drizzling caramel in the bottom of your dish. Next, add a layer of the yogurt on top. Add some of the apples you've chopped, and sprinkle some of the crumbled pretzels on the same layer.

To finish off the parfait, simply add the same layers again! Caramel, yogurt, apples, pretzel. You could repeat these steps indefinitely if you're really hungry and want to eat a punch-bowl-sized serving, but my recipe only required 2 layers of parfait to fill the dish.

Drizzle some more caramel just for kicks, and you're ready to eat up!

I hope you enjoy this treat, friends! Let me know if you try it; I would say it is parfait for this time of year. Happy late-summer-almost-fall!

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