Christmas Cookies!!

Conner decided a few weeks ago that he wanted to make gingerbread cookies. To Conner, gingerbread cookies means sugar cookies, in the shape of gingerbread men, decorated in colorful icing. So, I got on the Internet and found a sugar cookie recipe and an icing recipe. Of course, I had to alter it just a little. It had some ingredients in it that I didn't have on hand, but I was determined to find them and decorate cookies with Conner. The recipe required meringue powder and gel food color. I had never heard of meringue powder. I convinced myself that it must be some new specialty item, so I went to a specialty food store in mid-town Tulsa to look for it. Big mistake... I found the powder, it cost almost $20! But, they did not have the gel food coloring. I bought the powder and went home for the night. Just in case you are wondered, the gel food coloring is used to color the icing without altering the flavor. On Saturday, I went to Stillwater with mom and we stopped by Hobby Lobby to see if the had the gel food coloring and and to get other cookie decorating supplies. They had everything we needed, including meringue powder for $5!! We got everything we needed and headed home.

On Sunday, Conner came over. We made the cookies in the early afternoon so they would have plenty of time to cool. Conner loves to help cook.

After the cookies cooled all afternoon, we were ready to start decorating. We made the icing and after A LOT of mixing, the icing was stiff enough to outline the cookies. I outlined the cookies and then we made a bunch of colors. Then we filled our squirt bottles with the colored icing and started decorating. Conner did a great job. The plan was that this would be our practice run before the real Christmas cookies. In case you haven't decorated with flood icing before, you have to use a toothpick to move the icing around inside the piped outlines. About half way through the decorating I realized that Conner had only asked for 1 toothpick. I looked at him to ask him if he needed another toothpick (I assumed that he was using one toothpick for all of the colors and mixing them together) just in time to see him lick the green icing off the toothpick and start smoothing out the yellow. I nearly fainted. I guess kids don't realize that everyone doesn't want their tongue all over their cookies!! So, Conner got to keep all of the cookies for himself, which is probably what he wanted in the first place. We had a lot of fun decorating together and next time we will make sure we don't lick the toothpicks!!

Conner decorating.

The finished products!

More of the completed cookies!