Cookie Exchange Printable 2026: Sign-Up Sheet and Dozens-to-Bake Chart

For a cookie exchange in 2026, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lists nine major food allergens and says baking is what makes flour and raw eggs safe, so we built three free printables around both: a host planner, a guest sign-up sheet and recipe cards. Christmas Day is Friday, Dec. 25, 2026, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) federal holiday list. The chart below also works out how many dozen each guest bakes, from 6 to 20 guests.

The date is on our Christmas date page, and the weekends are marked on the December 2026 printable calendar. Other holiday sheets: gift tags, a wish list and a letter to Santa and the Secret Santa draw sheet.

How many dozen to bake for a cookie exchange

No agency or group sets a swap rule, so the chart is our own arithmetic. We assume each guest bakes one dozen for every other guest, plus one dozen for a tasting plate at the party. Every guest then takes home one dozen from each other baker. A half-dozen swap, where guests bake six cookies per other guest plus the tasting dozen, is in the last column.

Guests	Dozens to trade (guests minus 1)	Dozens to bake with tasting dozen	Cookies each guest bakes	Cookies each guest takes home	Half-dozen swap, cookies to bake
6	5	6	72	60	42
8	7	8	96	84	54
10	9	10	120	108	66
12	11	12	144	132	78
15	14	15	180	168	96
20	19	20	240	228	126

The totals grow with the square of the group, which is why 20 guests mean 20 dozen each. A host with a big list can switch to the half-dozen rule or split guests into two swaps.

Cookie exchange host planner 2026

The host planner is a one-page sheet with fill-in lines for the swap date, start time, place, a Répondez S’il Vous Plaît (RSVP) line, dozens per guest and the host’s contact, plus a plan counted back from Christmas Day. The task dates are our suggestions: invitations on Saturday, Nov. 28, replies by Saturday, Dec. 5, cookie names collected on Tuesday, Dec. 8, tins, boxes, wax paper and labels bought by Friday, Dec. 11, and a swap on Saturday, Dec. 12 as an example. The three December weekends before Christmas are Dec. 5-6, 12-13 and 19-20.

Cookie exchange sign-up sheet

The sign-up sheet has 15 lines. Each line has a guest name, the cookie, the dozens and nine tick boxes for the allergens the cookie contains. The FDA’s list on its Food Allergies page is milk, eggs, fish, Crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame, and the page says sesame joined on Jan. 1, 2023. The sheet writes shellfish and soy for short.

Cookie exchange recipe cards

The recipe cards print four to a page. Each card has name, yield, oven and bake lines, six ingredient lines, three step lines, a Contains row with the same nine boxes and the line “Bake before eating: raw dough is not safe to eat.”

Raw dough and flour: what the FDA says

The FDA says “most flour is a raw food. And it hasn’t been treated to kill any bacteria (germs) it may contain.” It adds that “cooking and baking is what kills any bacteria in flour, as well as in raw eggs that are often used with it.” The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have investigated outbreaks where “either the bacteria Salmonella or Escherichia coli (E. coli) caused food poisoning.”

For packaged dough, the FDA’s holiday food safety page says foods “including raw, packaged cookie dough, do need to be cooked,” and that eating them “right out of the package, without cooking them, could make you sick from bacteria.” Its advice is to “cook or bake them according to the directions on the package.” On crafts, it says “don’t let children use raw dough for crafts or ‘play clay,’” because “even if children don’t eat the dough, they may put their hands in their mouth after handling it.”