One of my favorite things about the holidays are the little projects, which in our house aren’t so little, but are fun still. We do gingerbread houses and lots and lots of cookies. I make the gingerbread houses from scratch, using a pint cardboard cream container for interior support for the kids, it lets them come together quickly and not get smooshed down. My parents came over to help this year and we did a big project of putting them all together with lots of different candies. Celia mostly loved to unwrap and see all the different kinds of candy. Josie worked a bit more towards a design, also aware that she’d get to eat some of it later, she focused on her favorite kinds of candies (chocolates, not gummys). Josie had also made a little one in school that she liked too.

Jordi and I made our own semi-house that didn’t quite have enough walls to complete a whole house with whatever candy we could manage to separate from our children. Jordi did hide a kitkat in the bottom inside so he could find it and eat it later.

Then the following weekend it was cookie bake off weekend. Throughout December I made cookie dough with the girls and put it in the freezer, mostly the drop cookies. Then over one or two days I take it out and we shape and bake it all off. This entails a pretty big mess of flour but it’s generally pretty enjoyable. The girls did a fantastic job this year of working together to make the peanut butter blossom cookies, taking turns making the balls and rolling them in sugar. Then I got to re-roll the ‘balls’ to make them round again. This year I also focused on making a bunch of cookies that my mother could eat. I think I overwhelmed her with four different kinds that were non-dairy. Some were successful (like forgotten cookies with dark chocolate) but the peanut butter blossoms were not my favorite. Next year I need to use shortening instead of margarine, it gave them a funny unpleasant (to me) taste. Chocolate chip cookies with coconut oil and dark chocolate also came out well, but I’ve made those before. I didn’t have enough cookie tins to hold all the cookies.

Between me and my cousins, we made at least 12 different kinds of cookies (I think I made 8+ myself). It may have been a bit much, but the variety was fun and we did a pretty good job on them even if it did take a few weeks.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2013 at 8:25 pm by Jen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.