Pad Your Cookie Shipments With Popcorn

Christmas cookies are always important, but remote gestures of love and holiday cheer are crucial this year — it’s imperative that any cookies that are shipped to friends and family arrive at their final destination unscathed.

Choosing the correct kind of cookie (like a sturdy gingerbread over a delicate lacey), and keeping “like with like” can help, as can using a proper cookie tin, and really packing them in. The less room the cookies have to move around, the less likely jostling is to affect them, and the better they will look when they are finally unwrapped.

But your work isn’t over once the cookies are in their tin. In order to be shipped, a tin has to go in a box, and extra space in the box can also damage your cookies. You can fill that extra space with newspaper or packing peanuts, but I never have either of those in my house. (I get my news from a little thing called “the world wide web” — maybe you’ve heard of it?) What I do have in my house (at all times) is popcorn, and that stuff just happens to be a very cushy, incredibly biodegradable packing material. (Plain popcorn works best for obvious reasons — you don’t want your shipping box to get buttery.)

To ensure your cookies have plenty of cushion, fill the bottom of your box with about two inches of popcorn, place the tin on top, then fill in the rest of the empty space with more popcorn. You can also use the popped corn to fill in any gaps in the tin itself if needed. It’s really hard to go overboard with the popcorn here — cookies are, after all, the most precious cargo.