After a very long day yesterday, we are happy to spend this Sunday at home. Today’s activity is to bake some Christmas cookies. I intentionally planned to bake on a weekend so we would have lots of time to make a mess and then clean up after. The luxury of extra times makes the mess less stressful for me.
The elf kicked things off with some baking themed mischief this morning.
I definitely could have made this scene more elaborate, but after a full day of solo parenting yesterday (my husband was super sick), this was all I could muster last night.
We made some easy shortbread cookies with a recipe passed down to me from my mom’s friend (see below if you’re interested in the recipe). The kids had fun cutting out the shapes and trying to get them onto the pan. My 3 year old participated for about 5 minutes and my 5 year old for 10 minutes, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was a fairly quick activity. I think sticking with an easy recipe was a good choice for us. We can get more fancy as the kids get older and have more experience with baking.
Recipe for Janet’s Shortbread
- 1 cup butter
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup berry sugar
Combine and cream butter and sugar. Add 2 cups of flour and mix. Add remaining 1/2 cup of flour only to the point needed (I usually only use 1.5 tbsp).
Roll out 1/4″ and cut out. Place on greased cookie sheet.
Bake at 325 degrees F for 20 minutes (or until slightly brown).