How Sweet It Is: Christmas Cookie Recipe & Easy Kids Craft

Mmmm…the smell of cookies baking in the oven! They even make candles trying to duplicate the smell! And while you are making cookies you are also making memories. This week I made some memories  and cookies with my two little ones with this delicious Christmas cookie recipe and thanks to Imperial Sugar we also used one of the cookies for an adorable and easy kids craft. Such a fun experience especially as this is my little girl’s first Christmas because she was born 2 days after last year and this year my 2 year old is so aware and interactive of the whole holiday experience. If you’d like your home to have the yummy smell of cookies or make a memory with the easy kids craft, read on!

Christmas Rolled Sugar Cookie Recipe

Courtesy of All Recipes.com

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups butter softened

2 cups Imperial Sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

5 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 salt

Cooking Instructions

1, Cream together butter and sugar in mixing bowl.

2. Mix in vanilla and eggs.

3. Add flour, baking soda, and salt then stir.

4. Cover and chill for 1 hour.

5. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

6. Roll out dough on floured wax paper to 1/2 inch thickness.

                                                                                       Image credit On The Spot Photography

7. Use cookie cutter to cut cookies.

8. Place cookies on ungreased baking sheet 1 inch apart and bake 6-8 minutes.

9. Let cool and frost or decorate. We used liquid frosting and red and silver sprinkles and white beads. (FYI the red sprinkles sort of turned brown when they mixed with the green frosting. The silver and white did great though!)

My kids and I used one of our Christmas tree cookies to do the adorable but easy kids craft featured on Imperial Sugar’s website. There are lots of cute crafts to do with your little ones with food on the site. We made a snow scene using a wide based jar, a bit of floral foam, sugar, a toothpck, a cookie (The orginal craft on Imperial’s website used Marshmallow peeps.), and candy dots.

1. Cut your floral foam to fit at the bottom of your jar. You can find floral foam at any craft store in different shapes for less than a dollar. I used a kitchen knife to slice the foam to fit the base of the jar.

2. A wider base jar is easier to work with and I also recommend either using a very big jar or use mini cookie cutters to make sure the cookie and jar are in porportion. Once the cookie is decorated and the foam trimmed and placed at the bottom of the jar, I inserted a tooth pick at the bottom of the cookie. I then slid the cookie into the jar and inserted the toothpick into the foam so that the cookie tree was standing up. My tree was almost too wide for the jar so this is why it’s really important to make sure your jar and cookie are a good fit.

3. We then poured enough Imperial Sugar into the bottom of the jar to cover the foam and make it appear as if it were snow around the tree.

4.  And every tree needs presents,  right? My Leprechahn and I then addded the dots to the bottom of the tree to represent colorful little presents. The cookie tree, sugar, and colored candy dots really do look like a happy snow scene! Such a cute idea!

My Leprechahn was so proud of the tree and we had so much fun making the cookies and making memories. The rest of the cookies using the Christmas Cookie recipe tasted delicious and the easy kids craft turned out adorable and is now sitting proudly in our kitchen where he points out every day “Tree! Tree!” One of my own favorite holiday memories growing up was baking and making things with my mom and it was extra special to combine the two things for this sweet project. And who doesn’t like their house to smell like cookies?

Thank you to Imperial Sugar for sponsoring this post and to On The Spot Photography for capturing these wonderful moments.