Curated Holiday Cookie Box

Last year, I shared inspiration for creating Christmas cookie boxes for gift giving. This year I’m sharing more inspiration for creating these curated little boxes of cookies. Imagine the typical plate of homemade holiday cookies you’ve probably baked many times, and then giving it a more elevated presentation and planned out themes.

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 (such as the white Sixlet candies in mini cupcake liners seen in the cookie box above) to fill in little or leftover spaces. (Tiny chocolates are a nice option for filler as well). You can find the tutorial for the knit hat cookies here. The acorn cookies were made by rolling out a little log of cookie dough, freezing it, and then slicing into little acorn cookies. Once baked and cooled, I dipped the tops into chocolate candy melts and then into brown “jimmies”.

You can either go with a theme as I did with the “woodsy” cookie box above or create a more general holiday mix that you like. The great thing is that you are the artist and the curator here and you’re only limited by your own imagination.

The tins above are really tiny which gives them an even more whimsical feel. A mini assortment like this would be fun for children to put together and give to friends.

By making the tree and the star separate pieces, it feels a bit like a cute puzzle. Last year, I created a box that contained an assortment along with Santa, and his hat was a separate cookie. You can see it here. I first shared the recipe for snowball cookies seen here in my Christmas book.

The front doors and wreaths are a simple assortment, yet so fun and cheery. I used royal icing to pipe the door details and large silver dragees for the door handles. The wreaths were made by pressing cookie dough through a cookie press using the wreath disk. I cut parchment to fit the space between the two wreaths and filled with tiny peppermint candies.

The snowmen in this last box were shaped by hand and are a really fun and easy baking project. You can find the tutorial here. I used cookie letter stamps to press in the holiday message on the conversation bubble cookies, and the snowball cookie recipe can be found here.

Instructions:

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

Stack cookies in boxes so that they all come together like a puzzle.

Wrap or top with lid and gift!

Notes:

• You can find my recipe and tutorial for the hand-shaped hats and snowmen and cut-out cookies on my blog 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.
• If you live in or near Spokane, Washington, I highly recommend shopping local and purchasing your baking equipment and supplies from Carolyn’s Cake & Candy Supplies. If not in this area, the affiliate links to the supplies linked above will take you to Amazon.