Holiday Cookies

I've been away from blogging recently.  I had a little too much on my plate for a bit between work and family, illness and even an ER visit.  All is well now.  But not to fear... although I haven't been online, we have still been having a ton of fun!

This time of year is so much fun.  We've already had a snow storm - the first for Ziva and the first for Zayit to really get out there and enjoy.  Zayit was so excited to put on his snow gear (a pleasant change from last year when everything was such a struggle.)  We went sledding in our yard and made a snowman.  Who knew it was so difficult to make a snowman!  

Zayit hadn't had kitchen 'playtime' recently, so this past weekend I decided to make cookies.  Zayit loved it.  It became a 2 day affair, starting with mixing the dough Saturday morning.  (as a side note - I initially intended to use pre-made dough, but I was completely put off by the list of ingredients in all the pre-made options!)  The recipe I used turned out really yummy.  Scroll down to the bottom if you want to use it as well.

Dude helping Miss Kitchen Aid get her job done

Mmmm.... dough is good Mommi

We put the dough in the fridge during nappy and rolled it out in the afternoon.  He was a stellar helper with rolling the dough and pressing the cookie cutters.

Dude working hard to roll out the dough

Even Daddy got in on the fun rolling out the dough!

I cooked the cookies that evening and they were completely cooled and ready for decorating by morning.  I made 3 colors of icing in addition to white (red and green for Christmas cookies and Blue for Channukah) and had them ready to go in pastry bags.  I also put various sprinkles and colored sugars into silicone muffin cups and provided spoons to sprinkle on the cookies.

Ready to decorate!

 As you can see, the spoons were not used for sprinkling the colored sugars...

Mommi: "Zayit, the frosting goes on the cookes"
Zayit: "No Mommi, I'm just eating it!"

The finished product...

Our recipe was given to us by a friend:
5 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whip together butter and sugar, beat in eggs and vanilla.  Stir in the dry ingredients and chill until somewhat firm.  Roll out and bake 7 minutes at 400 degrees.  Yummy!  I found that the thinner cookies were a bit crispier than I prefer and started rolling them out a bit thicker - maybe 3/8" thick.  The frosting is just confectioner's sugar and a little milk.