This is our first Christmas as an Old Married Couple, so here I am with a tutorial on gingerbread cookie decorating! 🙂
I’m just kidding of course. About the old part that is, though it feels that way sometimes. Especially when it’s the holidays and you call yourself a food blogger. So in an attempt to get with the holiday spirit I have decided to take it a little easy this week. Just a little. I will still be getting up to some of my usual shenanigans in the kitchen though. After all, there’s a Christmas meal to be had. And dessert. Especially dessert.
For us this was also the time to figure out and start a holiday tradition we would like to continue well into the future. Both of our families never truly observed Christmas, although my family loved getting together with my relatives for a great meal and a glass of good wine. This year my sister decided on a new tradition at my parents’ house in New Zealand…. a Christmas tree. Not just any Christmas tree though. It’s the tiniest one she could find! Sam, my sister’s cat, seems a little unimpressed though.
We don’t have a Christmas tree. Yet. Well, not this year at least. Instead we decided on something else we could do together that could be just as much fun, and certainly more appetizing. We decided on baking and decorating Gingerbread Cookies! Part two of this post coming, I show you how to make an awesome Gingerbread House (with recipe and template)!
The holiday season (I say holiday but my husband barely gets a day off from work) didn’t get off to the greatest start for us. Mr. K got sick, so between warm chicken soup and tomato soup he kept snacking on these gingerbread cookies (and ginger cookies too in fact) for much of last week. I made a lot of smaller cookies (even ones shaped like Australia, ha!) but they never got to the stage of being decorated because they kept disappearing down Mr. K’s gullet. I didn’t mind though as those cookies made him feel a little better, especially when dunked in a warm cup of tea, coffee or hot chocolate. Thankfully, the gingerbread house made it through the week unscathed and we got to dress it up and it was great fun!
I remember eating ginger cookies when I was really young and not liking them much. I have no idea why because I love them now. There’s really nothing like a perfectly spiced crisp gingerbread cookie that tastes just as good as it smells.
Today I also wanted to share some pictures from a fantastic day that I had decorating gingerbread cookies with a super 3 year old! I remember decorating my mother’s cookies when I was little and I had an idea it would be really fun if I could do the same with a little one. I don’t have kids of my own yet, but I knew of this most adorable 3 year old living close by and I was hoping he would be game too. So I asked his mum, who is a good friend, and I was really happy that she was willing to lend her 3 year old’s services to this Great Cause. Like most kids his age, he’s nuts about super heroes and his favourite at the moment is batman. So I even made him a batman logo shaped cookie.
So the weekend before last, we made a day out of gingerbread cookie decorating and it was SO MUCH FUN! I’m not sure if he or I had more fun, but it turned out to be an absolute blast! 🙂
He started off with the mini Christmas tree shaped cookies which I helped him decorate.
Then he wanted to do the batman cookie which he did all on his own! We were concentrating on just covering the whole cookie with frosting and then adorning it with plenty of sprinkles, a task he pulled off quite successfully.
I also made him some cookie ornaments for his Christmas tree. Two of which were shaped like a boy and a girl which he promptly called his mum and dad and then insisted on covering mum with pink and dad with blue.
He was getting better at it by the cookie. Pretty soon we realized that he was also getting better at sneaking candy into his mouth while we weren’t looking!
Finally he decorated the giant gingerbread man (which he called Iron-man) all by himself. I think at this point it’s safe to say that he liked sprinkles a bit too much.
We hung some of the (surviving) cookies on the tree and I think they looked really fun!
We spent the rest of the morning playing with batman’s little apprentice while he worked his sugar-high off. We had heaps of fun and I’m glad the little one had a good time.
We tried our hands at decorating cookies too, with mixed results. Although I have to say I was really happy with our Gingerbread house. It’s not as elaborate or impressive as some others I’ve seen before, but for our first time it came out really well! 🙂 Here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect in part two of this post tomorrow. That’s Mr. K and myself standing outside our gingerbread house.
No matter what you will be celebrating or how you will be celebrating, I hope you guys have a fantastic week and a bit leading up to the new year!
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