At no other time does the magic of baking become more tangible or appealing than during the holiday season. To me, this is a blessed time, when memories are made and cherished forever. The smell of freshly baked sweet delights, the cozy heat emanating from the oven, the impatience in my daughter’s eyes as she builds miniature castles out of cookie dough leftovers – these are moments that will stay with me despite the passing of time. What can I say? I just love the holiday season!
While I am more of a cake person, my daughter is a big cookie fan, who thinks a cookie a day keeps the boredom away 🙂 Lately, I have been using my time off to bake cookies for her and to give them away to friends and co-workers. What kind of cookies should I share during the holiday season? I often have trouble answering this question: I want to impress and to bake something that represents me, but time is short, I get impatient with my old recipe book, and my daughter is still too young to help mommy answer these sorts of questions 😉
Thankfully, recently I came across a quick and fun way to find the perfect cookie recipe to share: the Holiday Cookie Helper by Krusteaz.
Krusteaz was established in 1932 in Seattle WA and has been making premium baking mixes ever since. They sent me a range of their products to review as well as information about their Holiday Cookie Helper, a fun quiz they created to help millions of home bakers nationwide find the perfect recipe to make for a cookie swap.
The Krusteaz Holiday Cookie Helper is very easy to use: once you take a short quiz that identifies your cookie personality (yes, there is such a thing!), Krusteaz will let you know the perfect cookie recipe, tailored to your preferences and cookie swap occasion. As if this reward wasn’t enough, everyone who takes the quiz gets a coupon for a Krusteaz cookie mix, and 10 lucky participants will win a $100 grocery gift card!
The cookie quiz involved answering 8 questions about my favorite ingredients/toppings, the upcoming swap occasion (does it involve friends and family? co-workers?), my cookie preferences (thin and crispy? soft and chewy?) etc. After submitting my answers I was notified that my cookie personality was “The Gourmand” – apparently, I am someone who wants to impress even the most discerning cookie connoisseur 😉Â Krusteaz then advised me to try the Deep Dish Peppermint Cookie recipe for my holiday cookie swap, which uses Krusteaz Butter Vanilla Sugar Cookie Mix, eggs, butter and peppermint extract, and asks for a good helping of buttercream frosting. Since we don’t use red food coloring, I had to rely on a mix of festive sprinkles and frosting to create a lively color contrast. My mega-cookie was a great success at the office cookie swap!
I had so much fun baking and decorating that I decided to complement the deep dish peppermint cookie with chocolate chip cookies, using the Krusteaz Triple Chocolate Chunk Cookie Mix for this purpose. The smell of the raw dough was intoxicating, and the taste of the finished cookie was like an imaginary trip inside Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. So much chocolate, so much sweet decadence!
I served the cookies individually wrapped and scored extra points for flavor and presentation:
I had an amazing time checking out the Krusteaz Holiday Cookie Helper and then baking the recommended cookie (and then some!) with my daughter. Baking should be fun and relaxing, but sometimes it becomes a hassle, especially if you’re a busy parent. The Holiday Cookie Helper takes the hassle away and leaves only the sweet and good in baking, providing cheerfulness and delicious flavors one recipe at a time. Try it and you won’t regret it 🙂
*Disclaimer: While I received complimentary products to facilitate this review, all opinions expressed here are my own.
what a great idea! Loved baking and missed baking with you! Although my cooking personality would be of someone who doesn’t follow the recipes 😉
Ha ha! I knew it, lol