Christmas Cookie Box

As a little girl I remember the excitement of receiving a tower of almonds from my grandparents at Christmastime. Each little box in the tower was packaged precisely, yet cute, and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I love that feeling of taking an ordinary item and making it special. I guess I wouldn’t really call Christmas cookies ordinary but they can be made even more special by carefully arranging them to fit just so in a box.

To get started, you’ll want to select the boxes you’ll be using for the packaging. I like to use two piece small rigid craft boxes or small tins. You can find them at box stores during the holidays and craft stores throughout the year at places like Michael’s and JoAnn’s and online at Amazon.

Next, decide what cookies you’d like to bake for your assortment, basing your choices  around what would fit into tidy stacks inside the box. I like to bake a small assortment of cookies, sized to place in single stacks, and then a tiny option or two (like the snowballs and peppermint chocolates seen in the cookie box above) to fill in little or leftover spaces. For example, in the cookie box above, I had a small space between Santa’s hat and the star, so the peppermint chocolate filled in nicely there and the leftover space to the lower left was filled nicely with two stacks of snowballs.

Before assembling the boxes, you’ll need to line your boxes or tins with parchment paper. Do this by tracing the size of your box/tin and cutting the parchment out to fit. (With squares or rectangles you’ll want to cut two strips, one for each direction. With rounds, cut a circle to fit the bottom and one long strip to line the sides).

If you want to keep your box simple, and are going with one type of cookie, make it special by placing the cookies in an interesting way, rather than just stacking. An example can be seen in the cookie box above.

Another option for lining boxes is with paper baking liners such as mini loaf baking cups.

And it’s nice to keep your boxes within a theme. How about snowballs and a winter hat? With a little (or a lot!) of imagination you can create the most special little cookie boxes and if you’re anything like me, the happiness you get from making such a cute project will be a gift in itself.

Merry Christmas!

Notes:

• You can find my recipe for shaped and cut-out cookies on my blog here.
• You can find instructions for making a knit hat similar to the one shown above, or any hand-shaped design you like here.
• You can find my recipe for snowball cookies that’s featured in my Christmas book on my blog here.
• You can find my book, The Farm Chicks Christmas here.
• The links to products in this post lead to my Amazon web store. Thank you for your support.