How to Make Cookie Advent Calendars: My Step-by-Step Decorating & Filling Process
Ready to learn my step-by-step process for baking, decorating, and filling 12-Day Cookie Calendars?
Earlier this fall, I shared why Cookie Advent Calendars are one of our top sellers and three ways to make adding them to your seasonal lineup easier. As promised, I'm back with even more tips, including a full breakdown of the exact steps I use to prepare my own 12-Day Cookie Advent Calendars for family and friends. This process works well for 8-day and 24-day calendars too.
Follow this guide and prepare to make some holiday magic—and a premium profit to wrap up the year!
1. Fold Your Boxes
What You’ll Need:
- Cookie Advent Calendars
- Large, flat work surface
- Festive Music
- A helper or two (this is a great time to put your partner or kids to work and pay them in cookies later!)
Our boxes ship flat and require some simple assembly. Getting this step out of the way early
will make life much easier later.
Watch the how-to video before you begin. There are three key things to know:
- Put the door side of the box facing down as you fold. Having it flat against the table will save you from accidentally perforating a window.
- Even though you'll slide the trays back out to fill them later, it can help to slide them into the boxes at this point for added stability when folding.
- Don’t forget to pop open the tab on the inside cover. When you get to Step 10, you'll use that tab to tuck into the other side of the box so it closes like a book!
2. Bake Your Cookies
What You’ll Need:
- Baking supplies and ingredients
- Mini cutters
Before you start baking, make sure that the cutters you have chosen to use fit the calendar. Most 2” minis should fit, but it’s so important to double-check.
This year, I'm excited to offer complete sets of mini cutters to coordinate with all of our Cookie Advent Calendars. You can find them HERE, along with all of our box designs.
3. Freeze Your Cookies
What You’ll Need:
- Baked cookies
- Freezer-safe containers
- Parchment paper (optional)
Layer your cookies in food-safe, freezer-safe containers with good seals. I like to freeze my minis in groups based on icing colors and designs to make it more efficient when I’m ready to thaw and decorate. You can separate them with parchment paper if you want, although I never do and haven't had any issues stacking completely cooled naked cookies.
And don’t worry about your customers freezing their cookies later—this extra freeze step won't harm your treats!
4. Thaw Your Cookies
What You’ll Need:
- Baked cookies in freezer-safe containers
Pop your containers out of the freezer and leave them on the counter for at least a few hours or overnight with the lid on. Keeping the lid on while the cookies thaw will keep condensation off of your cookies!
5. Decorate Your Cookies
What You’ll Need:
- Baked cookies
- Colored icing (in piping bags) plus any decorating tools
- Embellishments
- Large, flat work surface
If you followed my tip of batching cookies by design and icing color, decorating will be a breeze! Simply make up your icing colors, get your embellishments ready, and get decorating.
Remember, keeping designs simple with just a few extra-special accents will keep this process manageable, and the irresistibly cute box will add the wow factor.
6. Bag Your Cookies
What You’ll Need:
- Decorated cookies
- 3” x 4” clear poly bags
- Heat sealer
Once the cookies are thoroughly dried, use our 3 x 4” clear poly bags to heat-seal each mini cookie individually and store them in a separate container by design. At this point, you could freeze the decorated, sealed cookies again until you are ready to fill your calendars, depending on your schedule.
7. Arrange and Fill Your Trays
What You’ll Need:
- Internal Cookie Advent Calendar trays
- Large, flat work surface
- Containers of decorated, sealed cookies
Lay out the empty food-safe trays from your calendars on a large, flat work surface. I use my dining room table and turn the entire dining room into a cookie workshop for the day! Since the cookies are already sealed, bagged, and organized into containers by design, you can now take an assembly line approach to filling the calendars.
Grab a container of one of your cookie types, then walk around the table, popping each mini cookie into the appropriate calendar spots. Because each bag is designed to nestle perfectly into the tray, you don't need additional filler to keep your goodies safe and secure!
Pro tip: put on your step counter and consider this the day’s workout.
8. Put It All Together and Seal Your Boxes
What You’ll Need:
- Filled internal Cookie Advent Calendar trays
- Cookie Advent Calendar boxes
- Bows, stretch loops, poem or instruction cards (optional)
- Large, flat work surface
Once all of the cookies are in place, slide each of your filled trays gently into the designed calendar boxes. This is when you’ll thank Past You for making your life easy by pre-folding all of those boxes! Finally, using that tab you popped out before, you'll close each box so customers can open it like a storybook.
Before gifting my cookie advent calendars, I always add a few special touches — a poem card, freezing instructions, and a stretch loop to tie it all together. 
Watch how easy it is to add these details to your own holiday cookie boxes!
Remember, this isn't the only way to prepare your Cookie Advent Calendars.
There are some bakers who like to make a weekend of it and get everything done at once. Others bake, decorate, and freeze different designs on different days. There’s no right or wrong way to do it as long as it fits your life and gets the job done! But if you're new to offering Cookie Advent Calendars, I hope you'll try this eight-step plan that helps me get the work done with plenty of time to enjoy my holiday season with family.
Remember, you can apply these same steps to 8-day and 24-day calendars too!
Still need to order Cookie Advent Calendar boxes or supplies? Don’t delay!
Tell me below! 
