Christmas Cookies

We made Christmas Cookies yesterday.

Let's just be honest as parents for one minute. Hold on while I hide my super mom cape. OK.. Baking with kids is not always fun. It's stressful and crazy. There's a thousand tiny freshly licked fingers reaching and grabbing every edible item possible and fights over who gets to stand on the chair closest to the mixer. All the while, visions of kids getting hurt when they get too close to the stove or reaching into the mixer dance through the mom's head. Then there's the whole different item of them catching Listeriosis from sopping up all the raw broken egg of the floor with their tongue. It's like a Martha Stewart style nightmare come true. Plus there's the fact that there's no such thing as patience when working with kids 5, or 25, and under.

And that's how our time baking together started yesterday.

I was stressed and can now repeat in my sleep the words, "If you lick the cookie cutter again, you are going to have to leave the kitchen."  Well that person left the kitchen and  I washed every single cookie cutter by hand..... all 65 of them.

So when it came time to decorate, I will still stressed and dreading it. I would have almost rather volunteered for a root canal than give them messy icing and pretend to be happy. But I figured that I would just it done quickly and get it cleaned up so I could put them in bed for the night. It wouldn't be a fun decorating time, it would be the race to the finish line and my prize would be a quiet house. So off we went on our decorating adventure without any of the proper tools and you know what? It was fun. lots of fun.

I couldn't find icing tips and squeeze bottles were at the store but we compromised with Ziploc bags and spooned icing.

They were quiet and concentrated so hard that for once, I had to keep the conversation rolling.

Then there was this lovable, huggable, Buddha belly thing:

This is her "cheese" face. (side note: this kid loves cheese and her new favorite word is cheese). Yes, she is covered in icing and squashed cookie mash. She was into everything, especially when I wasn't looking.

Here are the finished cookies. I didn't let them dry before putting them on plates with raised sides and the icing leaked off the cookie but they are still perfect.

So when it comes to baking with kids, maybe it's not so bad after all. The kids are fine, no one fell into the stove and we did not visit the brand new Children's hospital down the street.

Now I'm going to go put my Super Mom cape back on and eat a cookie, or two.. because calories are nothing when you're Super Mom.

Gobble Till You Wobble (revisited)

This is an old post that I wrote two years ago, so therefore this idea is four years old!! Ugh that makes me feel old. I should definitely redo them.  However, it's cute and easy to do, especially with children. These would be the perfect addition to school thanksgiving feasts. 

These cupcakes are old and these photos are blurry. Now you know where I stand.

I made these cupcakes two years ago but I found the pictures tonight when I was going through the old pictures on our hard drive. This is the perfect time to show you them! You will have time to make them for your kids thanksgiving feasts, well some of you might. These would also be the perfect dessert to bring to a get together this weekend.

They are so simple to make. Frost a cupcake with light brown frosting. If you want to use canned frosting (yuck.. agh. .uck...) just mix chocolate and vanilla together to get lighter brown. Ice the cupcake with a thick layer of frosting on top.

Take gel icing colors you buy at the store and make big rainbows using different colors. Now take a toothpick and drag from the outside of the cupcake into the middle, going around the outside edge of the cupcake. This makes the tail feathers.

Next, top the cupcake with a Nutter Butter cookie. Add eyes and the red hangy thing (I don't know the name of it) using the gel icing. I added a beak using banana laffy taffy cut into a small triangle.

Voila'! Finished Turkey cupcakes. Now go out and Gobble till you Wobble!