The Christmas Cookie Club

Earlier this year, my chick lit-loving friend Cassi read a book called The Christmas Cookie Club and got a wild hair up her ass. You see, the book centers on a group of women who get together once a year for a Christmas cookie swap. Well, Cassi decided to start a real Christmas Cookie Club and invite 12 of her lady friends to swap cookies. Sounds nice, right?

Cassi sent out invites in November, and without really paying much attention to the rules, I eagerly RSVP-ed. Well, let me share with you the rules of Christmas Cookie Club, which Cassi took straight from the book:

Yes, you read that right. Every attendee must make 13 dozen cookies. That's 156 cookies. And she actually asked for a baker's dozen, but we all kinda said, "To hell with that." I honestly didn't think about how many cookies were in 13 dozen until a few days before the event. That's when I realized my Friday night was going to be devoted to baking and baking and baking and baking and more baking.

I decided on the Cool Lemon Cookies from Vegan Food Gifts by Joni Newman. The cookies are supposed to describe your year, and my year was all about the summer. I bought my first house and published my first cookbook this summer. And nothing says summer like lemon. Plus, I knew these cookies would be fairly inexpensive to make in a large quantity since they're free of nuts and other pricey ingredients:

These are amazing! The cookies are soft but substantial. They don't crumble or break. There's lemon extract in the batter, and they're rolled in a mixture of powdered sugar and unsweetened powdered lemonade mix. Yes, friends, the cookies are rolled in Kool-Aid. Does it get any better than that?

Here they are all packaged up and ready to gift:

The party was Saturday night. We had lots of wine and plenty of snacks. I brought a Spinach Artichoke Dip that I'll blog about tomorrow night.

Now, Cassi is not vegan. And only one other vegan lady was invited. But so many people brought vegan cookies, just so Stephanie and I could eat them too! Each lady went home with 12 dozen cookies, and the 13th dozen is going to a charity.

While some of the cookies were not vegan, look at all that were!

There's Cassi's vegan Coconut Macaroons, Nicole's vegan Sweet Potato Spice Cookies, Kristen's Oreo "Poop" Truffles (she had a bad year, so she shaped her truffles like poop), Stephanie's German Spice Cookies, and Karen even veganized her grandma's Tea Cake recipe (those are sugar cookie-like cutouts!).

Now I have a bajillion cookies, so I'll be sharing plenty with my co-workers tomorrow. They can have all the non-vegan ones, but I'll be hoarding a few of the vegan ones for myself.