DC Area Blogger Cookie Swap: Unload Cookies, Come Home With More

Yesterday, I had the chance to unload some cookies from my freezer, as Lisa of The Splattered Apron bravely volunteered her Alexandria townhouse for a DC-area blogger cookie swap.
There were a lot of amazing folks there, and a lot of incredible cookies. A lot. Many of them chocolate.
I teamed up with Marsea to whip up treats for the gathering. We made a bunch of brownie roll-out cookies with various buttercream frosting fillings - check back tomorrow for the details on these.
There were, of course, some lime thumbprints with coconut milk chocolate filling in the mix.
We also contributed some cocoa-cinnamon roll cookies; you'll see the very buttery recipe for these on Wednesday.
And it was only right to bring some of the newly-developed Occoquan Shortbread.
And for our vegan and gluten sensitive friends, vegan gingerbread spice truffles.
Marsea and I had our cookies wrapped up and tagged with information about our blogs, since this makes for easier recipe searching.
And to make it easier to identify what was being offered, the tags were labeled with what was inside each bag.
Our total contribution - it looked intimidating all together. But it was for two people, so it was totally reasonable.

I was so excited to clear so much out of my freezer. Forgetting that I would, of course, come back with, well, more cookies. Drats. But a delicious drats.

On the top left are chocolate clouds – please let me know if these were from you. I need, yes need, the recipe. SUPER IMPORTANT UPDATE: These were from Erin, a fellow engineer, and her recipe is based on Paula Deen's chocolate gooey butter cookies. Engineers obviously make good bakers. Next to that delightful creation is one of Emily’s peanut butter shortbread cookies, and at the bottom of the plate is one of Sarah’s peanut butter-white chocolate-cranberry cookies, which were the perfect combination of salty and sweet. Of course I had OTHER favorites.

Beth’s plain old chocolate chip cookies up on the left were incredible. Perfectly soft. Yum. Host Lisa had some chocolate chip cookies with fruit that were also soft and delightful, and somebody else was genius enough to make salty chocolate thumbprints, one of which lasted long enough for me to photograph it down at the bottom of the plate there.

I also met many other amazing bloggers, including Lauren, Chase, Amanda, Erin, and Sarah. What a fun time we had, thanks to Lisa’s mad organizational skills.

Are you doing any cookie swaps this season? What do you plan to bring?