It’s that time of the year! There’s a chill in the air, the sweatshirts are coming out, and the festive season is creeping up on us. That’s why we are getting a head start at prepping with our Diwali Cookie Box. At the Pink Chai house we get the holiday feels around Thanksgiving, and then just roll into Diwali and Christmas.
We host an annual Diwali party, and I’m always looking for fun and different ideas for take home treats. (It’s not a party without favours is it?) This year I wanted to make something that was easy to execute, but felt truly festive. Something special, but not difficult. My first thought was mithai boxes. But honestly, my mithai making skills are weak at best, and I don’t really enjoy the process. We were talking through this at work and my co-worker Anjlee suggested doing a cookie box. Instant winner! Baking cookies is something Zara and I enjoy doing, plus, it’s something everyone in the family can help with.
Our Diwali Cookie Box ended up with five treats. We’ll be sharing one recipe a week until Thanksgiving, so you can start planning your baking list. Spoiler: these are not complicated cookies. In fact, many of them are almost ‘cookie hacks’.
We’ll update this post as the recipes go live.
[wc_fa icon=”heart-o” margin_left=”” margin_right=”” class=””][/wc_fa] Diya Shaped Chai Sugar Cookies
[wc_fa icon=”heart-o” margin_left=”” margin_right=”” class=””][/wc_fa] Shortbread Cookies with Rasmalai Glaze
[wc_fa icon=”heart-o” margin_left=”” margin_right=”” class=””][/wc_fa] Doughnut Holes (aka Timbits) with Mango Cream Cheese Filling
[wc_fa icon=”heart-o” margin_left=”” margin_right=”” class=””][/wc_fa] Mehndi Inspired Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies
[wc_fa icon=”heart-o” margin_left=”” margin_right=”” class=””][/wc_fa] Chocolate Dipped Fortune Cookies
We want you to have lots of fun making your Diwali Cookie Box, but we do have one request. Don’t let the pressure of recreating exactly what we did take the fun out of the process! You can make some of the cookies or all of them. Frost or decorate them however you want to. You can even skip our recipes and try something from the Diwali Cookie Box board on Pinterest. There we’ve rounded up all the cookie recipes we could find with a desi twist! To be perfectly honest, if you don’t have the time or interest in baking – you can also buy cookies. No pressure, no judgement.
How to Assemble Your Diwali Cookie Box
Now if you are curious about how I made the Diwali Cookie Box, I wasn’t super exact, but I’ll try to give you some guidelines to follow below.
- My box was a 12 x 12 scrapbook paper box from Hobby Lobby. This is the closet one I could find online, but I’m sure both HL and Michael’s carry them in brown plain cardboard in store.
- Once my cookies were done, I put a piece of parchment on the bottom of the box, and then I sort of laid out the cookies where I thought they would go. Once the cookies were placed, it was obvious that I’d have to place them in more than one section and add in some other little treats to fill the box.
- I was pretty casual about cutting foam core into strips and then using hot glue to hold it together and create little compartments of sort. This part is kind of trial and error and will be different for everyone depending on box size, number of cookies.
- Since I was short cookies, I decided to add the diyas and some nuts to the mix and I really like how that filled up the space.
Hope this helps! If you have any other questions leave a comment, or send me a DM on Instagram and I’ll do my best to help out. Half Baked Harvest also has some great tips on assembling cookie boxes that I think are worth checking out.
[wc_fa icon=”heart-o” margin_left=”” margin_right=”” class=””][wc_fa icon=”heart-o” margin_left=”” margin_right=”” class=””][wc_fa icon=”heart-o” margin_left=”” margin_right=”” class=””][wc_fa icon=”heart-o” margin_left=”” margin_right=”” class=””][wc_fa icon=”heart-o” margin_left=”” margin_right=”” class=””]
If you make Diwali Cookies, I’d love for you to share them with me! You can tag me in your posts on Instagram (@pinkchai), or use the hashtag #DiwaliCookieBox and I’ll find them 🙂
If you enjoyed this post you might also want to see our Diwali Prep Checklist, DIY Playing Cards for Diwali, and Why I Don’t Teach My Kids About Diwali