The boys took over most of the baking yesterday. I did decide to take advantage of the kids still wanting to decorate cookies at Christmas, so I whipped up some dough yesterday for us to make cookies today. I was set to spend a nice, cozy day inside, baking with the boys, but it turned out to be sunny and in the 50s! Is it Christmas or Easter? Don't get me wrong, I love the mild weather - especially for what it does for keeping our heating bills down - but it just doesn't feel like Christmas! Still, it's great to not have to fight with bad weather when people are traveling over the holidays - as I'm sure all those poor people stuck in Denver would agree. Since it was so nice out, we put off baking until after dinner.
First we rolled out the dough and cut out the shapes.
This recipe, from Martha Stewart, is a very tasty sugar cookie recipe, but it doesn't hold its shape really well, so it's best for cut outs without a lot of detail. And for some reason, last night they just didn't bake up right. I've made this recipe quite a few times and never had a problem, but last night, the cookies were puffing up and then totally collapsing. Some collapsing usually occurs when you remove them from the oven, but these were buckling and wrinkling before they even made it out of the oven, turning out kind of thin and crunchy instead of nicely puffed and a bit soft. They still taste good, but I can't figure out what happened to make them act like this! I wonder if I did something really dumb and forgot the eggs or something? Ah well, no matter, the boys had fun and that's the whole point.
Now, the fun part - decorating!
Ready for the oven!
One year or two, we went all out and did the fancy icing cookies a la Martha Stewart, but I found those to be too much work and the boys were really just as happy with the sprinkles and sugars. What's more, I found that I really didn't care much for the taste of the iced cookies - the icing tends to overwhelm the nice buttery cookie - and the icing definitely changed the texture of the cookies after a day or so. So sprinkles and colored sugars it is!
A few samples of their artwork.....
Now that it's Christmas Eve and Mom and Dad will be arriving later on today, that really will be the last of the cookies for this year. I don't know how much time I'll have to post over the next week or so, but I'll at least try to keep up with the photos so that I can post what we made and ate afterwards.
Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a joyous New Year.
First we rolled out the dough and cut out the shapes.
Now, the fun part - decorating!
A few samples of their artwork.....
Merry Christmas Alysha and family! We did the "fancy" sugar cookies last year... I like your idea of keeping them simple! Besides, it is suppose to be fun, not stressful!
ReplyDeleteI agree Alysha! Those look just as good as the fancy ones.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas to all of you!
Joe - Merry Christmas to you. You are so right! If we do icing again, I just need to do them early in the season when things are coming down to the wire.
ReplyDeletePatti - Merry Christmas! The boys are pretty happy either way, and that's the main point! :)