What I have to say today about Christmas cookies may change your life forever.
Honestly, which of you have not done some inner groaning when the kids start dancing around the kitchen asking:
"When are we going to make REAL Christmas cookies....you know....the kind that you make into all different shapes and decorate with icing and sprinkles!!!??? When, Mom, when?? Can you tell me when we're going to make them? When????!!!"
Um. I'll think about it........
What I really mean is, I hope you guys totally forget about the idea of cut-out-sugar-cookies-with-sprinkles because:
-I don't even like sugar cookies
-They take forever to make
-I don't like detail work with food (at all!)
-I'll lose a week of my life on this project
-half a day rolling out the dough
-half a day cutting out the cookies
-one day baking the cookies
-3 days icing the cookies
-2 days cleaning up the mess
Really, kids.
Do you want a semi-sane mom or a totally insane one???
Well. It would appear that my kids prefer having sugar cookies over a semi-sane mother because they convinced me to try it again this year.
Saturday was the much anticipated day.
Mother made sure that she slept later than usual that morning, had several cups of coffee and spent a half hour alone getting groceries and played peaceful Pandora Christmas music all in a brave attempt to prepare herself for Sugar Cookie Episode 2014.
The step that I always dread the most is icing the cookies because everyone wants to help and none of us really know how to do it very well.
It's so disappointing to work for hours to make sugar cookies only to find the end results displeasing to the eye.
This is what our cookies were looking like
Truly. They were struggling. The kids and the cookies. Not to mention the mother.
That's when I had my moment of enlightenment.
I pulled out a freezer bag, stuffed it full of frosting, cut off a corner and started squeezing
To say I was pleased with the results would be the understatement of the year.
Mother was now the one doing the happy little jig.
Easy
Quick
Kid friendly
Cute
I am sure that this hack saved us several hours of work.
And now for my second hack of the day
We simply rolled all our scraps into a rectangle and cut out small square cookies. I thought our little square cookies turned out darling and they saved us a ton of time as well.
And now for the last hack of the day-
How to quickly empty your icing bag
Folks.
The future looks bright.
I can keep on doing cut-out-icing-sugar-cookies-with-sprinkles with my kids.
And you can too!!!
Cheers to sugar cookies and big messes and happy people
Genius!!! And the timing couldn't be better! I need to make a pile of them for a church project and I'm being cheap and making the "drop" kind to eliminate rolling and cutting, now I'll eliminate the frostin with a knife part too and they'll look even better, Yay! And thanks! :)
ReplyDeleteYou made me laugh! I SO get it!
ReplyDeleteMy mom tells me that she was so eager to make cut-out cookies that she did it with me (her first child) when I was just tiny. And my dad fell asleep on the couch. So she made them alone. I'm not sure how she did it but through nine children she is still loves cut-out cookies at Christmas and now finds a couple grandchildren to make cookies with her.
There is many admirable qualities that I did NOT inherit from my mother. On top of the list is her calm spirit. Maybe that is the key because I also did not inherit her love of cut-out cookies. I have learned to endure it, to survive, but I'm glad to be done each year.
One of my ways of staying sane is to never let my children know that some people frost their cut-outs. They are allowed to use sprinkles, and chocolate chips or whatever else they dream up. But once they hit the oven, they are done. The fun is over.
Except for the floor. We'll be finding sprinkles on our socks for weeks.
Gina