Cookie exchange 2013

Cookie exchanges have now become one of my favourite things to do at Christmas time since living here in Canada. This is only my second time participating in one, but I have to say half the fun for me is choosing and baking the cookies. As a side note, I was feeling pretty nostalgic before I started writing this post so I re-read last year's cookie exchange one. Gosh time has flown by since then and it is funny to see what I was up to last year including having my brother and his girlfriend visit me. Anyway, this year I chose two cookies for the exchange. 

Both recipes were from two of my favourite bloggers and centred around ingredients I had picked up on my recent trip to Portland. First up were Bakerella's chocolate peppermint cookies. This was the perfect recipe seeing as I had grabbed a bag of the key ingredient. The only substitute I made was to use white chocolate chips instead of the bittersweet chocolate ones.

With my country music backdrop courtesy of Jake Owen tunes, I moved onto cookie number two. I definitely was more excited about this cookie, Kevin & Amanda's gooey s'mores cookies. This excitement extended from using the jet-puffed mallow bits, which are too adorable for words. I used Christmas coloured chocolate chips and regular graham crackers instead of mini kisses and cinnamon flavoured crackers. The cookies turned out great and tasted amazing, which makes me glad to know as I can make one more batch of them based on how much mallow bits I have left. This ingredient is definitely reason enough for another road trip.

These two cookies were easy enough to make, which I was really glad for as it meant I only spent a few hours of my day baking and have some deliciousness to show for me efforts.

Yay for cookie exchanges at Christmas, a newer tradition I hope to carry out every year as part of my festive season celebrations.