Right of Passage

I have fond memories of baking in the kitchen with my mom when I was young. I remember the homemade noodles she used to make and the bread dough (though I don't really remember the bread...hmm). And I remember the hours we'd spend baking Christmas cookies. Cinnamon fingers and peanut blossoms were an annual tradition, but what I anticipated most was decorating the cut out cookies we'd make; candy canes, gingerbread people, stockings, reindeer. While I don't do as much baking as my mom did, I have spent a fare amount of time in the kitchen carrying on those cookie traditions. Except...the cut out cookies. Because, now that I'm older, it just looks too hard.

 

But...being the spontaneous mom that I am (all of you who knew me when I was a planner {pre-children, of course} would be shocked!), I'll give you three guesses what is now abundant in our house...

 

I decided to jump in with both feet, apron-clad, spatula at the ready. Never mind that we didn't really have enough time to properly chill the dough. And I had absolutely nothing to decorate these beauties once they were done. I mean, the recipe was called "No Fail Sugar Cookies." What could go wrong?

 

With help recruited, and all essential ingredients pulled out (the decorations aren't essential), we began with the dough. At our house, we never {and I mean ne-ver} stir anything without getting some on the counter.

 

Wes and Elise did a great job taking turns spilling stirring the dough.

After mixing the flour and butter/lard, Wesley lost interest so Elise had mixer duty all to herself. In went the rest of the ingredients and we were ready to...



Wait!

 

Yes, apparently chilled dough is easier to work with. These are the details I don't remember as a child. Now I realize it's probably because, like my own children, I lost interest after thirty seconds and left my poor mom to finish all that tedious work by herself, so everything between adding the flour and slathering the finished cookie with frosting was a mystery.

 

According to a lady on YouTube, chilling the dough for 45 minutes before rolling it out, chilling it again for 15 minutes before cutting out the cookies and chilling a third time for 15 minutes before baking is the trick to cookies that don't quadruple in size. Um...that's an extra hour and fifteen minutes that we just didn't have. So our cookies, {or cookie, rather - yep practically one big huge one when it was all said and done}, didn't look much like the hearts, stars and butterflies pictured here.

 

I'm not sure my kids will look back and have fond memories of cut out cookies, but at least they'll have memories. And I feel like I've gone through a right of passage that all mothers must go through now that I've made cut out cookies with my kids. Probably just this once...