Making Christmas cookies and spreading germs

Every year I like to make a few bundles of tasty homemade treats to gift to our neighbors, the ladies that work in Chris’s front office and also the girls that take care of Taylor at the Y Childwatch. Oh, and for us to eat too. Because cookies and candies are as much a part of the holiday season as carols and Christmas cards. And since it had been about a year since I had last made sugar cookie cut-outs, I decided to make a practice batch yesterday afternoon to test that my recipe is still eatable.

And, lucky for me, I have a great little helper to assist in the whole process. And one who like cookies as much as Disney Princesses. The first job I gave my little elf was to stir the flour, salt and baking powder mixture, to which I totally caught her taking tastes of and then scowling at, being all, THIS doesn’t taste like cookies at all! But when I incorporated it into the sugar, butter and eggs, and then gave her a taste, I thought her head was going to pop off from pure excitement. And after two little spoonfuls of the delicious dough, she looked up at me and very sweetly asked, Um. Mom, could you please put some of that in a bowl for me? But since we still had cookies to make, I just gave her the beaters instead.

And after chilling the dough, rolling it out, cutting it into shapes and then baking the cut-outs into cookies, my little helper was put in charge of sprinkles while I frosted. And I’m pretty sure she put more sprinkles in her mouth then she did on the cookies.

And then she got a taste of the frosting, and kept licking and dipping her pudgy digits into each of the cookies.

And then, after not being able to hold off any longer, she just dove in and ate a whole cookie.

And from the crumbs, and the Mmmmms and Yummmms that spewed from her mouth, I would say our recipe is still good enough to serve to others. Except we’ll keep this set for in-house consumption only, and make a Taylor saliva-free batch for gifting.