It’s been a long time since we’ve held one of our family cooking competitions, but the kids decided to resurrect the tradition over our holiday break – and they decided it should be a Christmas Cookie Bake-Off.
The idea is simple: we would each bake our own chosen kind of cookie, and at the end of the day, we’d each sample them all and choose a winner.
The reason for it all is a bit more complex. It’s fun, sure, but it also helps everyone to be independent and competent in the kitchen. Each person has to choose or create a recipe and then execute it, which can be trickier than it sounds. We’re also making memories – there is always a lot of laughter in the kitchen during these events, both during the cooking and the tasting portions. In the midst of this totally nutty year, we need all these things.
We decided that this kind of baking competition needed a different set of rules, so My Big Helper planned them out.
Each person chose their own recipe. I decided to play around with an idea I’d had and combine a few recipes I’d used previously.
I mixed up a simple peanut butter cookie dough and spread it out on parchment paper. Then I topped it with brownie batter and rolled it all up together, cinnamon bun-style. After chilling it, I sliced and baked them.
The cookies baked into ginormous cookies the size of my hands, but I was happy with the overall finished product.
My Big Helper choose a recipe from a favorite cooking blog, and then she added her own twists to it. She made a chocolate sugar cookie and, per the directions, rolled and smooshed it. She loved this part!
My DH loves Oreos, so he decided to make Oreo cheesecake cookies. He found a recipe with only a few ingredients and went to town smashing some of the Oreos he’d received for Christmas (yes, we gift food. We think finding favorite treats in stockings is fun!). His dough came together quickly and he baked them in minutes.
My Little Man was determined to make whoopie pies, a family favorite, even though it was against family rules for this competition (we decided that since we love them so much, they would automatically win, and that wouldn’t be fair). To get around the rule, he baked the cakes, iced them, and decorated each with an “artful swirl of sprinkles” instead of topping them with a second cake. The recipe is tricky to get right, and he’d never made them before. After encountering a few snags, he whipped out some “cookies” that were both huge and uniquely his own.
The uber-organized and Type A Big Helper decided we couldn’t just vote for our favorites – we needed a rubric. She designed a full-color rubric complete with clipart for the scoring portion of the contest.
Since appearance was judged, we each put our cookies on a separate plate and tried to make them look good. This was a bit trickier than it looked for some of us, but it was both fun and funny.
DH’s Oreo cheesecake cookies tasted just like Oreo cheesecake! It was crazy.
My Little Man’s Whoopie Pie cookies (not pictured above) had a slight texture issue but tasted amazing.
My Big Helper got super creative and put peanut butter icing between two of her cookies and then rolled them in potato chip crumbs for crunch and a salty contrast. The finished product was a bit sweet for me, but the cookies themselves are great.
I was quite surprised when my peanut butter-brownie combo cookies won. They decided that the cookie overpowered the brownie a bit, but everyone liked the flavor combination.
Our Christmas Cookie Bake-Off was lots of fun – and the kids decided we need to do it again. We’re hoping to have another cooking competition soon, too – we’ve missed them.
What fun thing did you do as a family this Christmas season?
