- Drop cookies are your friends! The mixing of ingredients can take some time, but you gain time in how fast you can setup cookie trays for the oven. Good drop cookies include peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies.
- Beware the simplicity of shortbread. It's one of the simplest recipes out there, however preparing each cookie takes time and patience. Generally one rolls out cooled dough on to a cutting board then uses a cookie cutter to form each cookie. The tricky part is not tearing the cookie as you remove it from the batter, then repeating this many dozens of times.
- Alcohol is your friend! You can make a center piece to your cookie arrangements by making one special batch of alcohol laced cookies - these are of course only for adults :) I recommend making Rum or Whiskey balls. You can put a handful inside of a small re-sealable container so that the aroma is retained. See my chocolate rum balls for an example.
- Pick out your containers carefully. Those nice looking 16" tins can hold 3 or 4 dozen cookies each. Try for the 8 or 10" tins, they hold about 12 to 18 cookies - this is important in that one batch of cookies can generally fill two tins instead of just one.
I suppose the important thing to take away from this experience is that you really need to think ahead when taking on a project of this size. I know that next year this will be much easier if I follow my own advice ;)
