Cookie Exchange Mayhem

Over the last three years, I've participated in a really fun Cookie Exchange that one of my friends has thrown. Every time, she's changed the theme so people can get pretty creative with their cookie names, designs and even how they dress. Sadly, this is her last year doing it since she'll be moving back to the states in the middle of this up coming year. *pout*

Being true to form, I stuck with my traditional cream cheese cookies since they seem to be a hit every year, despite never winning "Best Tasting". I don't get that..I really don't, lol. Every year, I get loads of compliments on them, always get asked to make more, but I never win that specific category. 

This year, I figured I'd box up all the cookies and would keep my fingers crossed for hopefully winning the "Presentation" category. So, I scoured the internet while I was back in California, found some "Winter Wonderland" themed cookie boxes and had 'em shipped here. Honestly, I was pretty shocked at how nice they actually were considering they weren't all that expensive. For the life of me, I can't remember where I ordered 'em from :(

Pictured below are all the ingredients I used to make this cookie factory come to life: 

25 cups of flour

10 cups of sugar

10 cups of butter

56 ounces of cream cheese
10 egg yolks

YES, that's a whole lot of cookies to be made with that amount of ingredients! When I originally RSVP'd to the exchange, I could've sworn that participants were required to bake A LOT of cookies...like thirteen dozen. Apparently, I really didn't read the directions properly because people only needed to make FOUR dozen..go me! So, everyone ended up with a dozen and a half cookies each box...and I made eighteen boxes, lol. 

My trusty Pampered Chef Cookie Press:

I ended up using six of my stoneware pieces to cycle through all the cookies that needed to be baked...aye aye aye..

By the time I was done, I made a total of 400 cookies in which 288 was used for the Cookie Exchange. The others were given to friends who asked for some when they found out I was making them, lol. I ended up doing coconut frosting since that seemed to be a massive hit last year, verses using my traditional lemon frosting. Eric was absolutely thrilled *please note my sarcasm* to help me "paint" all of 'em since it gets really tiring, yet wasteful, to dip all the cookies in the icing. 

Here's how everything looked by the time we were done :) 

Oh, and I won "Best Presentation"! YAY!