Cookies!...

...my son's new favorite word. I got myself together last week and made gingerbread cookies. I used the Martha Stewart recipes for Gingerbread Snowflakes and Royal Icing. Unless you are actually making 6-inch snowflakes its a huge batch of dough. I only cooked up the first third and still ended up with 14 cookies. The rest is packed away in my freezer. I made half the icing recipe and had plenty left over. I had forgotten how much of the Gingerbread flavor comes from molasses. This recipe called for a full cup.

Here is the dough just after mixing. It really looks like nothing more than a pile of poo.

Shaping the cookies took some practice. My first attempt ended with dough that got too warm and had to go back in the refrigerator. The recipe says to chill for one hour but I would strongly suggest waiting several hours or overnight. It  is much easier to shape the dough when it is super cold. I also used a piece of saran wrap over the dough so that I didn't have to add so much flour to keep the rolling pin from sticking. I found that rolling the dough as thin as I could get it ended up with the most defined snow flakes after baking.

I took this little box of goodies to a moving party on Saturday. They were much appreciated.

I don't have any cute pictures of S eating these cookies although he has had several, but we took him to a friend's cookie decorating party on Saturday evening that produced some great photo moments.

Oh, and a special "Thank You!" to my in-laws whose early Christmas present made this year's cookie adventure possible. They got me a Breville toaster oven because my apartment oven is almost useless.

I hope you all enjoy the pictures!