Organized CHRISTmas Baking

I love CHRISTmas!!! It's my favorite time of year. I love celebrating Jesus' birth, playing Santa Claus for my kids, spending time with family, all of the decorating, the present giving, caroling, CHRISTmas programs, and of course, CHRISTmas baking.

I love to bake!!! It's so fun to pull out recipes, get out the mixer and supplies, and spend the day in the kitchen baking lots of yummy treats to share with others. As with anything, I have to be organized about it.

Here's how I CHRISTmas bake:

1 - I select all of the recipes I want to make and how many of each (ie batches).

2 - I compute how much of each ingredient I will need.

3 - I go through my cupboards, pantry, and fridge to see what I need at the store and make my list.

4 - I go shopping for all of the baking needs (I also stock up if I notice my baking cupboard is low on something since I love to bake randomly).

5 - I lay out all of my dry ingredients (flour, sugars, baking soda/powder, salt, spices), wet ingredients (butter - so it can soften, eggs, milk, molasses), and misc ingredients (peanut butter, chocolate chips, candies). I put my mixer on the main island. I get out some smaller mixing bowls, measuring cups/spoons, and baking sheets.

6 - I start with the recipes that need to be refrigerated (ie sugar cookie dough, peanut blossom dough) so that they can be in the refrigerator while I am making the other cookies.

7 - I use one set of measuring cups/spoons for dry ingredients and one for wet so I don't have to wash as much.

8 - I also like to keep a sink of hot soapy water to put stuff in as I go to make cleanup easier.

9 - I just work my way through my baking and clean as I go so there isn't a major mess to clean up at the end.

10 - I have a station for cookies to cool and be packaged.

It's just so much fun. I really enjoy letting Luke help me (if he wants to of course) and by being organized it keeps things running smoothly.