Tis the season for "making" "cookies"

Ok, so I don't get the Martha Stewart award when it comes to baking, or cooking, or much in the kitchen for that matter unless there are directions on the box for how long I need to microwave it. Well, I can do magic in the crockpot. Of course the only thing I need to do it put the stuff in there and then turn it on. It's not that I CAN'T cook (with guidelines), I just don't enjoy it as much as The Hub, therefore, he and the microwave takes turns providing nutritional means for us. Well, I have 2 cookie stories for you. I've posted all of the pictures in the slideshow on the sidebar.

Sugar Cookies...

Good ole fashion gfcf sugar cookies. One of The Elder's classmate's mom send us some gfcf flours and the recipe to try. First, I never make cookies from scratch and if I do, The Hub is there to supervise and then eventually take over. The Gma was coming over so I thought I was safe. Nope. That made it worse because now I'm feeling the pressure (where do you think The Hub got his baking talent?), but kindly enough I was not chastised for pitching the rolling pin and flattening out the dough with my hands. The Gma brought us a large assortment of cookie cutters to use. I let them pick out which ones they wanted to use, so among the Christmas Trees and ornament, we also had a Christmas Question Mark, a Christmas Hand and Foot, a Christmas "L," and a Christmas "Z." Oh, and the Christmas "X" which was accidentally stretched out to look like a Cross.Ten points to the first person who correctly identifies the mass to the left of the foot.

These were ALL the sugar cookies we made. All Ten of them. The Elder did well with the sensory portion. He hated touching the butter, but once we started cutting the shapes he had a lot of fun squishing and flattening the dough. Maybe a little too much...I bit into a cookie that had dog hairs in it. ho hum. We now only have enough batter left to make about 3 cookies. It was some yummy cookie dough - and a LOT easier to do it that way.

Gingerbread Cookfins...

In this post, we were preparing for upcoming food art projects. Fast forward 2 weeks later and we still haven't done the banana pops and we finally got around to the Gingerbread Train. Well, attempting to make it. In the interim we lost the box to the cookie mix. This is disastrous to me (see first paragraph). We looked through the recycle box but we cannot find that one. I went online to this particular company's website and lo and behold they can a recipe link on their site! Woo hoo! With much confidence, I start rattling off the instructions from the computer to The Hub. Still being drugged from his procedure (at least that is the excuse I'm using), he questions the instructions but listens to me anyway.

"Really? Two eggs?"
"That's what it says."
"Are you sure we use that much oil?"
I point to the computer screen.
"Ok."

Well, it was not quite the consistency we were hoping for.Yes, that would be the kids spooning the dough into the cookie mold. The Elder was not too excited about the drippiness of the cookie dough. It was not what he expected (or any of us for that matter). We had to get him to pose for this picture. I think I got 2-3 shots of that ONE scoop he participated in before hanging out on the yoga mat.

Needless to say, the trains didn't turn out. We couldn't even get the cooked matter out of the mold in one piece. They tasted pretty darn good though. Since we were in charge of refreshments at Sunday School this morning, we used the rest of the dough/batter for mini-muffins. They got hard pretty fast, so they were firm like a cookie, but airy like a muffin. We got lots of compliments on them, despite my lame attempt to explain to them exactly what they were. One of my friends said,

"They're Cookfins!"

So there, a new tradition? Try it! All the cool kids are doing it.