The Holiday Season is here! It’s time to begin planning for all of the sweets and treats that we love to bake and have around when friends and family are in. I’ve compiled 5 tips for planning your holiday baking. This will help you get ahead and get organized so you can enjoy the holidays!
It’s not too early to start planning your holiday baking. In reality, it’s not too early to start actually baking! Here are my top 5 tips for getting ahead of the game when it comes to holiday baking.
1) Make a list of the goodies that you and your family love to have during the holidays. Be realistic. If you are super organized and really enjoy baking, you can pick quite a few recipes. The more, the merrier, right? If you have a hectic schedule with traveling and such, you might want to just pick one or two family favorites to bake up.
2) If you don’t like to bake or don’t have the time, outsource it! I am serious. I love to bake, but for Thanksgiving, I order a huge, delicious cheesecake from a local restaurant. No shame in that game. Find a bakery that you love and talk to them about making your holiday baked goods. Then you can skip steps 3-5. Done and Done!
3) If you do like to bake, go back to your list and make a shopping list of ALL the ingredients you will need. 40 lbs of butter, 3 bags of flour, etc. Don’t leave anything out. We already make a ton of trips to the grocery during the holidays.
4) When you are shopping for Thanksgiving, go ahead and buy the things on your list from step 1. I know, it seems like a lot, but if you already have everything on hand, it will be easy to start baking when the mood strikes. We like to start decorating for Christmas on the weekend after Thanksgiving. So we usually bake up a batch of cookies, too.
5) Get out your calendar and plan when you want to bake. Make a date with yourself, your partner and/or your kiddos to do some holiday baking. Cookies and pies that can be frozen can be made early in the month. One year I made 12 different kids of cookies and I froze 2 dozen of each type as I made them. It was so fun to pull them out on Christmas and have a ton of cookies!
Here are a couple of my family’s favorite holiday cookie recipes: Almond Bar Cookies, Chocolate Chip Merengue Cookies, and these sugar cookies would be divine when made into holiday shapes.
