cookie day, year two

This year's Cookie Day was twice as chaotic, twice as disorganized, and twice as messy! Ugh, the mess. Bowls, spoons, both sets of wands for the mixer, food dye, egg whites down the drain, measuring cups and spoons, spilled vanilla (always with the vanilla!!), flour everrrywhere, coconut oil in my hair....

So yes, I finally got around to making the cookies this morning. The dough was as hard to work with as I remember--I used about half of it and gave up, we'll see if I get around to rolling, cutting, and baking the rest. Baking took an hour, six cookies at a time, because the uncooperative dough needed re-chilled after 2 minutes of working with it. For half of that hour, Fletcher played upstairs in his bed to give me some space in the kitchen, and for the rest of it he played with the baking sheets. Whatever works.


Baked! Only a couple broke, but a few more cracked. I don't know why. Some kitchen mysteries weren't meant to be solved.


After nap, I made the icing. I realized we only had green food dye, so I put aside 1/3 to dye red when I get some more. Cameron was super excited, and kept reminding me of my job (icing the cookies) and his job (decorating them with sprinkles). Here he is, showing off his Christmas shirt (which involves covering it up with his hand, lol).


Fletcher was a little unsure of what was going on...


...but he jumped right in!


Notice the crumb on his lip...how suspect.


A seasoned pro.


While Cam showed a lot of self-control with the taste-testing, it didn't take Fletch long to give the icing a try.


He was pretty pleased.


Cam was proud of each and every creation.



He eventually did his fair share of tasting, too. How better to clean up the spilled sprinkles?


They were both horribly sticky, artificially-dyed messes by the end.


In the end, it was a huge pain in the rear, this whole project. Messy, messy, messy. Frustrating! Time-consuming! MESSY! But...more importantly, they had fun. And I had fun with them! Once all the prep work was done, that is. Next year I'll do the prep without the kids underfoot, and then we can all just have fun together when it comes time to decorate, instead of me worrying about the mess and the horribly uncooperative dough and the missing food dye and all that jazz. Besides, with a face like this, how could I refuse to do it all again next year? Or heck, maybe even for Easter. ;)