• 30 games
  • Checked October 2026

Games to Play at a Cookie Exchange Party

Guessing games at the plates, fair ways to fill the tins and recipe card games, with no eating contest.

Games to Play at a Cookie Exchange Party

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  1. Six Titles, One Ballot1. Before anyone tastes, each plate gets a card that names any major food allergen in the cookie, such as milk, eggs, wheat, peanuts or tree nuts.2. Hand out a ballot with six titles: prettiest plate, best name, best with coffee, most like a grandmother's, bravest idea, and the one whose recipe you want.3. Guests taste what they choose to and write one plate number beside each title.4. Count the ballots. Each title goes to a cookie, never to a baker, and a plate can win only one.Players: 6 to 20. You need: a numbered card for each plate, and a ballot and a pen for each guest.
  2. Lightest Tin to Heaviest1. The owners write their names under their tins. When the lids are on, set five packed tins in a row.2. One guest lifts each tin in turn and arranges the row from lightest to heaviest by feel.3. Check the order on a kitchen scale.4. Count the tins in the right place, then mix up the row for the next guest.Players: 3 to 12. You need: five packed tins and a kitchen scale.
  3. Ingredient Bingo From the Real Cards1. Each guest draws a grid of three squares by three and writes a different baking ingredient in every square. Flour, sugar and butter are banned.2. Bakers take turns reading the ingredients of their own recipe aloud.3. Guests cross off any ingredient they hear.4. The first guest with a full row calls out, and the first with a full grid wins.Players: 4 to 20. You need: the recipe cards, paper and pens.

Next step Print a tasting score sheet

How it works

These games to play at a cookie exchange party use what the guests bring: a plate of cookies, a recipe card and an empty tin. One game asks guests to taste, and there each guest tastes only what they choose to.

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A running order for the swap

1. As guests arrive: Match the Description Card to the Plate. 2. Plates out: How Many Cookies on the Table?, then Six Titles, One Ballot. 3. To fill the tins: Numbers From the Mixing Bowl, or Musical Tins Around the Table, where everyone fills at once. 4. While packing: Alphabet of the Cookie Jar. 5. Before coats: Next Year's Assignment From the Tin.

What to ask each baker to bring

A recipe card with their name on the back, and a note of what is in the cookie. The FDA lists nine major food allergens: milk, eggs, fish, Crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. Write any of them on a card beside the plate.

  • Agree the count in the invitation: how many cookies each guest takes from each plate.

Questions and answers

How do you decide who picks first at a cookie swap?

Draw numbers from a mixing bowl, pass a wooden spoon through a left-right story, or line up by how far the cookies traveled. In One Cookie a Lap nobody is first for long: each guest takes one from each plate and rejoins the line.

How do you vote for the best cookie at a cookie exchange?

Use a ballot with several titles, so more than one plate wins. Six Titles, One Ballot has six. Number the plates, leave the bakers' names off, and give each title to a cookie.

What can you do with the recipe cards at a cookie exchange?

Play with them before they are copied. Bakers read their cards aloud for Ingredient Bingo From the Real Cards, leave one thing out in Find the Missing Ingredient, or own up to the real batch size in The Card Says Three Dozen.

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