Bake, Decorate, and Donate

It is almost Christmas. That means shopping, wrappings gifts, and eating. Oh so much eating. As I get ready for all of the celebrations, I over heard The Daughter saying “I need this, I need this, and this Mommy!”. I look over and I found The Daughter going through the Toys R Us big book. I should have thrown it out when I had the chance, that was my fault. I soon realized, I need to teach the munchkins that Christmas is more than just getting gifts. I was trying to think of a way to teach the kids the beauty of giving. The best way I was able to think of was making something and donating. 

 During one of my mental breaks from work, I was looking for ideas for cookie ideas and I came across the website called drop in and decorate through the all the all recipe website. One idea they had was to have a cookie decorating party and deliver them to a local nonprofit organization that assists individuals like a food shelter. I did some searching and I found that the Ronald McDonald house takes food donations for the families staying with them.



The one we choose was right by the Children’s hospital in Chicago. Those family is staying there most likely to stay close to a sick child.  Myself and the Best friend (girl) was already taking the kids to the museum for an outing so I thought it was perfect timing.



I had so much cookie dough at home anyway (I have been hoarding it for Christmas for the last couple of months). We made chocolate chip cookies, molasses, sugar cookies, shortbread, and spritz cookies.  I actually made the spritz cookies from scratch.  

I uses Martha’s recipe for the spritz
3 Cups of AP Flour
½ Tsp of Salt
2 Cups of Butter
1 Cup of Sugar
1 Egg
2 Tsp of Vanilla Extra
Directions

1. Preheat the oven to0 350F
2. Shift together the dry ingredients: AP flour and salt.
3. In a different bowl, beat the butter and sugar until it becomes fluffy at a med to med-high speed.
4. Beat in the egg and vanilla to the butter mixture.
5. Reduce the speed and slowly add the flour mixture.
6. Take the dough and kneed until it is really soft.

*After this point, we varied how we made the cookies.

7. Fill the cookie press with the dough and place the disc with the shape of preference.
8. Squeeze the dough on a ungrease cookie pan.
9. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. 

Decorate to your hearts desire.
We used both a cookie press and a Chinese cookie press. See the picture below to know what I mean.

This is the Chinese cookie mold I'm talking about.  We even use some of the details to put candy accents.

Our decorating station but we really didn't use it.

 

This is how I broke in my new pastry board, the munchkin making sugar "cookies".  They actualy turned in to sugary sand.

Instead of using the decorating station, we did it this way.

The spritz cookies 

We dyed the dough green and I used the Chinese cookie molds to make these.  These are the main three shapes I used.

A Buddha.  I love the little belly.

A fish

A little piggy

Blue dough and I actually use the cookie press for.

This is how my kitchen ended up looking like.

After the cookies was baked, this is how some of it turned out.  I thought the kissing piggies was cute.

The different shapes and decorations we made.

The blue dough I used with the cookie press

The girls getting into the fun

This is only a fraction of the cookies we made.

All of the different buddhas.  Each time we decorated them, we put something in the belly button.

The fish we painted.

Blue snowflakes

The Jade Series

The traditional Christmas cookies

We used the scraps of the different colored cookie dough to make these.

Look!!!!  1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish....har har har

The chocolate cookies

Molassas

And Finally....Green Eggs and Ham

We made so much cookies, I actually lost track with the amount of cookies we made. When we dropped off the cookies, we made sure we took the kids with us so they are able to see why we made the cookies. They were excited when we were walking up to the house. Through I did this to teach the kids, I found myself feeling good on what we did.