Baking cookies with your kids this holiday season
In addition to being delicious, christmas cookies for kids represent a great way to spend family time and create holiday memories. Snowball, gingerbread, molasses and candy cane cookies for example, are fun, delicious and easy to make and the whole family including the kids can get involved in the process, rolling and dipping dough into different shapes. In many households, baking christmas cookies for kids is a tradition as valued as the passing of precious family heirlooms from one generation to the next.
No matter how young, children will enjoy having jobs they can do to help with the baking of christmas cookies for kids. Of course, the idea is to make them believe they are baking the cookies for Santa as a way of getting on his good side (thus inculcating the technique of planning for own gain into their sugar-plum filled visions). You want to make sure you pick simple recipes and to insure success, follow these suggestions for making the perfect christmas cookies for kids.
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Some baking tips for making christmas cookies for kids
1- Always use ingredients exactly as indicated
If a recipe calls for butter or margarine, do not use the light, whipped or spreadable kinds. When using only butter, do not substitute margarine. Unless a recipe for christmas cookies for kids specifies otherwise, use all-purpose flour.
2- Measure both dry and liquid cookie ingredients correctly
Baking christmas cookies for kids cannot be a successful venture unless you measure all ingredients accurately. Use plastic or metal measuring cups for dry ingredients and solid fats, and when measuring butter, margarine, shortening and brown sugar, pack it firmly before measuring it off. For liquid ingredients, use glass or see-through plastic measuring cups. For sticky liquids such as molasses etc, spray the inside of the measuring cup with cooking spray or wipe lightly with vegetable oil.
3- Buy the best cookie sheets you can afford
Non-stick cookie sheets do not produce the best christmas cookies for kids as they can result in being over-browned. Insulated sheets don?t work well either and can lead to cookies that are under browned. Shiny, smooth-surfaced or textured aluminum cookie sheets provide the best baking results for christmas cookies for kids. The sheets should be at least 2 inches shorter and narrower that the inside dimensions of your oven in order to provide the best circulation of heat.
4- Bake a test cookie
Before baking an entire sheet of christmas cookies for kids, take the time to bake a test cookie. If it comes out too firm or dry, add 1-2 tablespoons of milk to the dough. If the cookie spreads too much and becomes flat during baking, add 1 tablespoon of flour at a time to the cookie dough until it feels firmer.
5- Mix, bake and decorate christmas cookies for kids in stages
Cookie dough is very durable and it can be refrigerated or frozen for baking later. Store the dough in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, or freeze it for up to 6 months. Once christmas cookies for kids are baked, they either should be decorated within a few days or frozen for a later time. In any case, make sure to cover them tightly.
6- Storing christmas cookies for kids separately
It is important to store different kinds of cookies in separate containers so that the flavors do not mix. Crisp and soft cookies also should be stored separately because otherwise they will all turn out to be soft. As a general rule, store soft and chewy christmas cookies for kids in a tightly covered container and crisper cookies in a loosely covered container, like a cookie jar without a tight seal.
Make this holiday season special by baking christmas cookies for kids with your children. Create some special family memories and?
Don?t forget to leave some goodies for that old fat guy in the red suit.
Happy christmas cookies for kids and to all a good?whatever!