Our December 6 Advent Stocking not only called for investigating the St. Nicholas Day shoe. Some post-school & -gymnastics cookie baking also was on the agenda.
I used a traditional German spice cookie recipe with a simple glaze frosting (links to be added). They are meant to be cut into the image of St. Nicholas, but, alas I didn't get a cutter ordered in time. Silas didn't care and loved decorating these simple cookies. I halved the recipe so it made three dozen and I used about 1/3 cup of icing for all the cookies. The cookies themselves are not at all sweet, are gently spicy and the glaze provides just a touch of sweet. Perfect with tea or eggnog.
The recipe is perfect for little ones because the dough mixes up easily is gently kneaded and then cut and baked immediately. The dough was forgiving of a few stray lumps and extra rolling flour and separated easily from the cookie cutters. They looked perfect out of the oven, handsomely caramel in color with clean, well defined edges and a smooth surface.
We put the cookies in the oven, ate dinner, then decorated. The small amout of cookies and virtually unlimited decoration potential kept my 5 year old stayed engaged the whole time. What a pleasant evening we had!
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