This past weekend we made Christmas cookies. We did a gender stereotype reversal – Clare, Ellen, and Meg went to get a christmas tree, while Dave, Spencer, and I stayed home to make cookies. Spencer was much more helpful than I had imagined, and he stayed on task until we finished the cookies. Saturday we made Spritz cookies. It had been a long time since I had made them, so I was little bit out of practice. The dough was a bit too stiff, which made pumping it out of the cookie press difficult. I saw in the instructions that one can add an egg yolk to remedy this, which helped quite a bit. My other mistake was that it seemed that instead of gel food coloring, we had decorating gel, so the cookies were not very green. Oh well. Spencer helped me make the dough, press the cookies, and sprinkle them. I made peppernuts by myself while the kids were napping, and then later made up the cut-out cookie dough to refrigerate overnight.

The cut-out cookie dough also seemed a bit stiff, even though I decreased the amount of flour. I’m still getting used to baking in a dry climate. I couldn’t get the cookies rolled out quite as thin as my mom does. Maybe next year I will be in better practice. After we finished the cut-out cookies, Spencer helped me deliver some cookies to the neighbors.
pictures follow