Frequently Asked Questions about Christmas-Cookies.com

  1. Who are you?
  2. How do I contact Christmas-Cookies.com?
  3. Where do the recipes come from?
  4. How do I submit a recipe?
  5. I submitted a recipe, but you didn't add it to your site. Why?
  6. I posted a recipe review; how come it didn't get added to your site?
  7. Why don't you have more photos of the recipes?
  1. Who are you?
    Christmas-Cookies.com is run as a hobby by me, Mimi Cummins, one woman who happens to be a cookie enthusiast and a professional web designer, with the help of one of the programmers that I used to work with at my day job. It's not a business or multinational corporation, it's just a hobby, and mostly a one-woman show.
  2. How do I contact Christmas-Cookies.com?
    It used to be easier to contact Christmas-Cookies.com until people started sending me e-mails looking for some long-lost cookie recipe. Although I enjoyed helping people, when the e-mails reached up to 100 recipe requests per day, obviously I couldn't keep up. For more information on contacting the webmaster, see our contact page.
  3. Where do the recipes come from?
    The site started as a small collection of my own personal recipes and those handed down from my grandmother. It grew as friends and family members added their recipes. I also added many of the best recipes that were posted to the (now defunct) forum. Finally I added a way for users to submit recipes and that is our greatest source of new recipes. Ocassionally I will post a very good recipe that was previously published elsewhere but I will give credit to the source, and I will never post a recipe that has been recently published.

    I have also posted many recipes from the now-defunct Holiday Cookie Club forum at Epicurious.com. I was a member of the community and when Epicurious made it known that they were closing down that forum and making the archive inaccessable, I saved the best recipes from that forum and am adding them to Christmas-Cookies.com a few at a time, with credit to the original poster, the Holiday Cookie Club and Epicurious. That community worked too hard to build a wonderful archive of Christmas cookies to have it wiped out completely at the whim of Epicurious.
  4. How do I submit a recipe?
    Just go to the Recipe Submission page.
  5. I sent a recipe, but you didn't add it to your site. Why?
    I only add recipes a few times a year so it may take a while, but if the recipe is original and well-written, I will add it. If I don't add it, it could be because I already have something very similar on the site. Or the recipe might lack some vital information. Sadly, I have to delete a lot of recipe submissions for the following reasons: you can't simply say:

    1 can of evaporated milk
    1 package of chocolate chips

    You have to say the exact size of the can or package so that inexperienced bakers trying the recipe for the first time (or people living in countries where standard sizes of common ingredients are different from yours) know what size to buy. You must specify:

    1 (5-ounce) can evaporated milk
    1 (6-ounce) package of chocolate chips

    Or you might have said "bake in a slow oven" without giving an exact oven temperature. Or your recipe might have called for ingredients that are extremely difficult to find in North America, making it impossible for me to test your recipe.
  6. I posted a recipe review; how come it didn't get added to your site?
    I have very strict guidelines for the reviews and I personally approve (or reject) every single one. The review form strongly suggests you Read the Review Guidelines before you post your review. If your review didn't get added it is always because the review didn't conform to the guidelines.

    Maybe you typed in ALL CAPS, or maybe you said the recipe was horrible but you gave it 5 stars (which is incongruous, and I don't know how many stars you wanted to give it). Maybe you only said that the recipe sounded good or that your grandmother had one like it that was good - we only want reviews of that exact recipe that you have actually made. We also can tell who is fooling around and not posting honest reviews: for example you may have posted reviews for 7 different recipes under 7 different names. In that case we'll delete every single one of the reviews even if you're saying the recipe is awesome.

    And YES we do post negative reviews! But if a recipe has too many negative reviews, we'll just delete the recipe, so that is why you won't find many recipes with negative reviews.
  7. Why don't you have more photos of the recipes?
    I don't bake every single recipe that gets added to the site. There are over 535 recipes now and it would be too time-consuming to bake every one, not to mention too expensive in ingredients (see the answer to question #1 about how this website is just a hobby). Roughly 30 recipes do have photos. I do take pictures when I can and add them to the site. If you want more pictures, how about helping us out by taking photos of the recipes you've made and submitting them via the Recipe Submission page? Thanks!