There’s just something so nostalgic about baking Christmas treats on a lazy Saturday morning, still in Christmas pjs from the night before and Taylor Swift’s Christmas album blaring through the speakers!!

I wouldn’t say I particularly enjoy baking, but I do love spending time with my girls and this year they wanted to bake a tin full of Christmas treats for our neighbors.  Easier said than done so I picked out a few things I knew we couldn’t mess up!  Ready for our line up?

First – linking my kitchen faves HERE for all of the christmas baking!

OREO TRUFFLES

First up, Oreo Truffles. Now we cheated a little bit and made these earlier in the week. I actually decided on these treats because I knew we could make them in advance and that they’d keep in the freezer.  The girls and I made the balls on Tuesday, popped them in the freezer and then dipped them Saturday when we got the chocolate out for the gingerbread cookies!

 

You can find the full recipe here. 

I use the Ghirardelli white vanilla melting wafers.  We dump a 12oz bag of the wafers in a mason jar and then put it in the microwave for 2 minutes. A quick stir and then you just take two spoons and toss the frozen ball back and forth after dunking it, making sure it’s covered in chocolate. 

We drizzled a second coat and then topped with Oreo dust to make them look pretty!

CHRISTMAS PRETZEL HUGS

The second treat we made were Christmas Pretzel Hugs. We’ve been making these for years!They’re actually so delicious and so easy to make, only 3 ingredients.  The kids have loved making these since they were little.

All you need are mini pretzels, Christmas hugs and Christmas m&ms. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees, place the pretzels on parchment paper and place a hug on top of each pretzel. Warm up the chocolate for 5 minutes at 200 degrees and then just press m&ms into the warm chocolate.  Let cool!

We made these Friday night and got them out of the way!  These treats also store in the fridge well so they make a great treat to make ahead of time. 

Linking the Christmas Pretzel Hugs recipe HERE!

As for the cookies, we made sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies. The dough for each of the cookies needs to be chilled so we also made the dough the night before. It helps so much to break up a big baking day!

I didn’t have it in me to roll the dough out and use the cookie cutters the night before so because they didn’t go from fridge to oven they spread a little on us.  Because there is so much butter in sugar cookies, they need to be chilled!!!  Rolling them out post fridge was fine but they weren’t as cold as they could have been.

Anyways, while the cookies were baking, we made the frosting!  And while the cookies were cooling off from the oven, we started baking the gingerbread cookies. 

GINGERBREAD COOKIES

These gingerbread cookies are AMAZING. This was the first time I’ve made them, wasn’t sure how they were going to turn out. They were delicious and so so easy, beginner safe for sure you just need molasses which I don’t usually have on hand. 

Linking the gingerbread cookie recipe HERE!

You roll them into balls, roll them into sugar and then press them flat with the bottom of a cup. They were perfect!

SUGAR COOKIES

Once the sugar cookies were completely cooled off, we frosted them. This truly is the best sugar cookie recipe. They are so soft and the frosting is excellent. Trust me on this!  After decorating our cookies we were finally ready to pull out all the chocolate. 

Linking the BEST sugar cookie recipe HERE.

We dipped the Oreo balls and then dipped the gingerbread cookies.  Next time I’d make the gingerbread cookies a little smaller so they each get a little more chocolate. Oh my goodness were they delicious though! 

It took about 5 hours to finish all the baking … whoa!  Having the girls help me was amazing. I didn’t even have to beg, they genuinely wanted to be baking. It was such a great Saturday!  The boys were in and out, they’d help for a little bit and then get bored and go play outside!

We assembled all the tins, wrapped them up with a red bow and then delivered them the following day with our family’s Christmas card. 

 

We usually do a sparkling cider with a cheeky “may your holidays sparkle” tag. In the off chance these Christmas treat tins become our new tradition for our neighbor gifts, I wanted to share it all here so we have a quick and easy place to reference our favorite recipes and how we organized it all!

Have you ever made a Christmas treat tins for your neighbors?  Neighbor gifts are so fun!  My biggest piece of advice, don’t over do it. There’s a time and season for everything. When my kids were little something like this would have just stressed me out. Now that they’re older and want to help, I’m finding that we are moving into a new season at it’s so fun!  

What are your favorite holiday treats to make? Or holiday traditions you look forward to every year?

Linking my kitchen faves HERE for all of the christmas baking!

xo, Abby