Cookie Swap 2012

Today was the Cookie Swap.  It was actually the 9th Annual Cookie Swap.  I have been involved with them for 9 years, can you believe it?  Anyway, we had a theme this year, which was "Favorite Fairy Tale." 

The fairy tale I chose was Rapunzel.  I chose to bake gluten-free lemon bars, which I called "Rapunzel's Lemon Tresses."  I got the recipe out of a book called The Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten-Free.

This book is filled with tons of cakes, cookies and bars that are made with a gluten-free cake mix.  The bars came out really yummy.  Each year we try to be more creative with how we present our cookies for display and the packaging.  This year, I was thinking of making Rapunzel's Tower as my centerpiece. 

I recruited Vince to help me and he was great at coming up ways to make them easy.  We took mailing tubes and cut them about 4 inches high (these will be for the individual sets that people will take home) and one that was about 10 inches high for the centerpiece. 

Then he drilled a hole towards the top for the window and we covered the tubes with strips of scrapbook paper that was a brick wall and he made little pointed roofs out of construction paper.  His daughter and I then took yellow yarn and braided long lengths to hang out of each window hole, which helped suspend the bag of lemon bars in the tube.  They came out so cute!

Here are the individual sets:

We had such a good variety of cookies and bars.  I will show a few here:

Apple Toffee Crisps (Snow White Twists)

Apple Pie Cookies (Evil Witch/Snow White)

Hazelnut & Gretel Cookies

Cinderella's Pumpkin Streusel Bars

Princess & the Pea Bars (Graham Cracker)

Meringue Clouds (Kisses)

Everyone brought such yummy cookies.  There were also Chocolate Pillows, Honey Lemon Cookies and Pumpkin Cheesecake Coaches.  I could not eat all of them, but they all looked delish.

We also vote on superlatives, and I won for "The Most Magical" which was Best Presentation.  The other categories were: "The Fairest of Them All" (Best Cookie), "The Queen's Jewel's"  (Richest/Most Chocolatey), "The Court Jester" (Nuttiest), and "Over The Moon" (Best with Milk).

We had a good time and I did not come home in a sugar coma.  Hooray for that!  I tried to off set all the sugar with a healthy portion of veggies from the veggie tray and cheese cubes. 

We'll have to think of a fun theme for next year too.  Anyone game for coming to Florida for the 10th Annual Cookie Swap??