The Genius Trick for Reviving Stale Christmas Cookies

Kelsey Shepard, the woman behind the wildly popular Kelsey Elizabeth Cakes, the sweets boutique that has four locations Northeast Ohio, just wanted to do a small holiday cookie exchange—but ended up hosting a two-evening event for 375 people involving more than 14,000 cookies.

It all started in 2022 when a small cookie swap Shepard wanted to have with the managers in her shop didn't pan out. The shops are super busy every holiday season, so there wasn't a way to make room for personal baking.

But Shepard didn't give up on the idea. This year, she asked her Instagram followers if they'd be interested in a holiday cookie swap—and more than 1,000 people said yes. With that enthusiastic response, Shepard booked an event space at The Elliot Hotel in Cleveland and let her followers know that 200 tickets would be available for the swap.

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"The night before tickets went on sale, I'm laying in bed and I looked at my husband and I'm like, I just have this feeling," said Shepard. "I think a hundred tickets are going to go really quickly, and I think a hundred are going to slow down." Boy was she wrong. Those 200 tickets sold out almost immediately, which inspired her to open another night with 175 tickets. That swap sold out in seconds too.

Over the course of the two nights, hundreds of people brought six dozen of their favorite holiday cookies to the cookie exchange and went home with a bespoke box of goodies from fellow home bakers. There were fancy decorated sugar cookies and homey peanut butter blossoms and family heirloom recipes galore.

That grand expanse of cookies was gorgeous and inspired us to up our cookie exchange next year, but it also made us wonder about storing all of those nice goodies, which is a question we wrestle with every holiday baking season. And who better to quiz about the best way to store your precious cookies than Shepard? Here are her top tips for storing Christmas cookies to keep them fresh. Use them now, then keep them handy for baking throughout the rest of the year.

5 Top Tips for Storing Christmas Cookies to Keep Them Fresh and Delicious

Here's Shepard's best advice for keeping your precious homemade cookies tasting their best for the long haul.

• Air is the enemy. "Essentially air is the enemy when you're working with most types of cookies," says Shepherd. "Wrap them as tightly as you can or put them in an airtight container or wrap them and then put them in an airtight container. You can put them in a Ziploc bag and then wrap the Ziploc bag in tinfoil. You can wrap them in plastic wrap or foil and then put them in an airtight container. The closer you can get that wrapping the better. The more air that's in there, the more they're just going to be drying up."

• The freezer is your friend. "If you're storing them longer than a day or two, pop them in the freezer. I think some people are like, eh, we put them in the fridge for a week or even on the counter. And of course, they'll still be edible, but they really lose a lot of the chewy goodness because the liquid just evaporates out of them, so you are left with a little bit more of a crumbly mess. So I say freezer after two days, and that really keeps the moisture in very nicely."

• Thaw them correctly. "If you have the space, take them from the freezer the night before you need them and pop them in the fridge. Sometimes when you take them just from the freezer to the counter, they can absorb all that extra condensation as they thaw out and that can make the cookie wet. If you can pop them in the fridge, it's going to give that more of the just baked vibe than if you go from the freezer to the countertop."

• Divide and conquer. "If you store your molasses cookie next to your peppermint cookie next to the peanut butter blossom the next day everything tastes like molasses-peppermint-peanut-butter-blossom. Christmas flavors are strong flavors, so they do tend to clash a little bit more than, say if you had sugar cookies and macarons right next to each other. But mint is the one to look out for especially. At my shops, we never store anything minty or anything coffee near anything else because it always tends to flavor other things. Ideally, you'd wrap each type of cookie separately, but home bakers (myself included) don't always have the time or energy to do that. So if you don't have it in you to separate each type of cookie, just store the mint ones separately."

• Keep them chewy—or make them chewy again. "If you have a chewy cookie, so something like a chewy ginger molasses cookie or a chewy chocolate chip, the best way to keep them fresh is to add a piece or two of white bread to the container. That will add a lot of moisture back into the cookies. It's a very weird tip, but it totally works for chewy cookies. And it can't be sourdough or anything like that, that it has to literally be grocery store white bread. Nothing fancy. I've used hot dog or hamburger buns in a pinch because they're that same type of white bread." The great thing about this tip is that it works on stale cookies, too. Put the slice of bread in your cookie container and let it sit for 24 hours. Your cookies will soften right up!