Make: A Cookie Competition!

(and yes: I'm starting to abbreviate my blog titles for my daily posts :) just fyi!)

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about my family's tradition of hosting a cooking competition for our Thanksgiving festivities. In the past, we have done chili, desserts, and tailgating food. This year was cookies :) It was such a good time and everyone got a lot of really good recipes out of it, so today I want to show you how we my mom threw our shin-dig, and maybe you will host your own for some holiday fun!

First you need to come up with "voting" categories for your competition. Since ours involves food, we did the following: best tasting, best appearance, most creative. You can certainly add/change categories to fit your party's needs. Create a voting "ballot" with these categories that give simple directions (put the number of the cookie on the line).

We made labels for our cookies and each label had a number: that way, when you vote, you only have to put a number instead of the cookie's entire name (we are all about simplicity here)!

The supplies you will need: your ballots (cut into small squares), cookie labels, pens, toothpicks, and some tape.

As guests arrive, have them write the name of their cookie on a label, tape their label to a toothpick, and stick the toothpick into one cookie on their plate (since my mom hosted/therefore recruited me to make labels, I printed my cookie's name on the label and had blank labels for everyone else: you can definitely write your cookie's name, doesn't matter either/or)!

After tasting has been completed, have everyone vote and a neutral party (usually the host/hostess) can tally the votes. Have prizes for everyone: something small for everyone who entered, and have correlating prizes that fit your competition. My mom gave everyone a cookie cutter for participating and kitchen gadgets/a cookie cookbook were the category winner's prizes.

So easy and SO fun! Since we won best tasting, we got the cookbook: thanks Mom!

Have you tried any competitions with your family?