Simply Cute

In days gone by, Christmas cookie making days were a marathon event, especially sugar cookie days. All the kids wanted to help and as every mother everywhere knows, things take five times longer with kids as helpers. In past years, the dough has been mixed and chilled, the cookies cut and baked, the frosting whipped but not colored, and at the end of the day one very tired mother left the dishes piled up for the father to wash when he got home from work. And it was all a bunch of glorious fun. Every cookie cutter in the bin was used at least once. Many of the cookies were slightly deformed by just a little too much contact with warm little fingers. The dough was rolled and rerolled many times as the concept of cutting cookies as close together as possible was still a nebulous concept. And nearly as many scraps ended up in little mouths as in the pile to reroll. It really was an all-day adventure. 

Today was my sugar cookie day. All the kids were at school and based on a previous conversation, there were only a few cookie cutters in play. I rolled the dough, cut the cookies, rerolled and repeated until all the cookies were cut. As the finished cookies started coming out of the oven, I looked at the clock and was stunned to discover that I had only been in the kitchen for an hour. Yup. Solid proof that cookie baking time increases exponentially with each child involved. 

With so much more time available than planned, I not only whipped the frosting, I colored some. And then I decorated cookies to be consumed for our FHE treat this evening. And it was fun! A different kind of fun than cooking with kids, but the kind of cute food fun that I love. And once the cookies were all decked out, I shared the pictures with our family group chat. Because my family knows me, and they always appreciate my gastronomical endeavors. And this was the ensuing conversations:

And I meant every word. Grownups only cookie days lead to cuter cookies, but kids on hand cookie days lead to sweeter memories. And the fact that Nathan snort laughed in public totally made my day!