“Your Dad is Slicing date nut swirl cookies for me to put on a cookie sheet to bake in the oven for Dine with Nine cookie plate to take for tomorrow’s dinner!”

Note how the date nut swirl cookies are only part of a much larger and much more vast in scope “cookie plate”. We have seen this kind of behavior before. The cookie plate is one of my mother’s exhausting holiday standards. WAIT! Before you follow the trend and start tossing Banana Split Oreos and Keebler ELFudge cookies onto that cafeteria tray you stole in college for sledding, let’s go over the necessary elements to my mother’s cookie trays.

1) Must have at least 3 different kinds of home made cookies. That’s right, get those Milano cookies the fuck out of this cookie tray! Just because they look classy does not earn them admission to the cookie tray. If you showed up to a fancy restaurant wearing a dinner jacket but no pants, they’re not seating you. Case closed. A simple example of 3 cookies would be: Chocolate chip cookies, ginger cookies, and peanut butter blossom cookies (its these kind). Clearly though, mom’s going apeshit with some date nut swirl cookies. Go apeshit if you like. If you make them, they go on. They don’t gotta be pretty, they just have to be full of sugar and/or butter.

2) Must have at least 1 dessert-like treat. The dessert-like treat also CANNOT be store-bought unless you already have 2 desert-like treats on the tray. Then a few Hershey kisses won’t kill you. So let’s say you have some homemade fudge (I know, I know. Don’t ask me when you have the time to make this shit just shut up and listen) and some merry minglers. THEN you can add those Milano cookies or Dove Promises you so desperately crave.

You might have wondered, what in the tinsel is a Merry Mingler? Good question. Feel free to click this link for photographic evidence. Most people call it “Puppy Chow” but my mother REFUSES to class down her holiday treats with dog language. But let’s be honest, its Crispix cereal COVERED, like, 6 times, in chocolate, peanut butter, and powdered sugar. It is as close to holiday dog food as you can get. And there’s no classy way to eat it. You get powdered sugar all the over your face and shirt while you stick your white, wet, sticky fingers back in for more. You look, best case scenario, like a coke addict who has finally let themselves go. So, really, Puppy Chow is pretty generous.

3) The tray must be a christmas themed tray. There’s gotta be one or more of these elements pictorially depicted on the tray: christmas tree, greenery, little tiny birds standing on greenery, santa claus, holly with berries, a sleigh or sled, snow, snowflake, stars, presents, mistletoe, scarves and/or cute old-timey winter clothes, military-grade artillery, or snow-men. Here is a shining example.

Don’t get too religious with the tray. Nobody wants to be grief-eating their way through fudge and cookies to discover an image of the Christ-child underneath their sugar cookie judging them with his innocence and newfound paleo diet. “You know…there are low levels of toxicity in all of the cooked grains we eat—” We get it, Jesus, shut the fuck up and let me enjoy my cookie. Enjoy your brown rice date roll…Jesus Christ, who invited this guy?

There you have it. Those are the basic rules. Follow those three simple rules of thumb and you’ll be on your way to making my mom’s super-trays all season long.

Allowances/Advanced moves: 

• Cookies or dessert-like items CAN be made by other people, preferably a gift from a friend. Trays are like Pokemon cards, you can trade Charmander for peppermint bark any time.
• Cookies can be stored in christmas-themed tins to up the christmas ante.
• Trays are gift city. Take them to your very own Dine with Nine and blow your friends away. Tell Pinterest to suck it with your Instagram pics of people enjoying your cornucopia of treats.
• Sprinkles.