Baking And Bonding Cookie-Making With Your Children Produces More Than Just Tasty Treats

There’s more to sugar, flour and butter than meets the eye.

Mix and bake these humble ingredients and you’ve got a cookie. Yet let a child help with the process and you’ve created something much greater.

You’ve made a memory.

Kids and cookies were made for each other. Both are sweet and small and, while messy in the making, will become something that almost always is delightful. While kids love cookies year-round, the holidays inspire some of the sweetest concoctions.

During my childhood, Christmas cookie traditions were as rich as melted chocolate poured over a pan of toffee bars. There was my grandmother, Magnhild, who, as far as we kids could tell, lived in the kitchen from Thanksgiving to New Year’s. A second-generation Norwegian, she took the task of holiday baking very seriously, creating dozens of delicate and delicious cookies. While Grandma carefully made each rosette, pepperkakor and krumkake, she kept one eye on the four of us, making sure the memory (and, with any luck, the method) was being etched into our impressionable young minds.

Her daughter — my mom — continued the Norwegian cookie tradition while noisy youngsters tugged at her apron strings. Mom also added to her baking repertoire our family’s favorites, namely, gingerbread men and butter cookie cutouts, which she let us decorate with buttercream frosting, red-hots, chocolate chips and candy sprinkles. These treats never lasted until Christmas. When we were old enough to be subtle, we would sneak them right out of the freezer, one by one, until all that was left on Christmas Eve was a Tupperware container of wax paper and crumbs.

Now, with three kids of my own, it’s my turn to continue the cookie tradition, though parents today are more tempted to buy than bake. As families are splintered and stretched, overscheduled and stressed, baking with kids can seem like one task too many during the holidays.

Maybe so, but it is time well spent, says Carol Ebbighausen-Smith, of Spokane’s North Side. She has spent many Christmases with her now-grown children, teaching them to make taffy, almond brittle, chocolates and nutballs.

Ebbighausen-Smith believes cookie making between a parent and child is so valuable she has taken her message into the classroom. She teaches the joys of holiday cookie decorating in classes through Community Colleges of Spokane’s Institute for Extended Learning.

On a recent evening at Shadle Park High School, Ebbighausen-Smith carefully set out undecorated butter cookies, tubs of colored frosting and tiny jars of M&Ms, cinnamon candies, minichips and more. A dozen eager children and parents spent the next two hours creating edible masterpieces in shapes of bells, angels and Christmas trees.

“This is the best class in the whole world,” one enthusiastic student said as she engulfed her cookie in frosting and candy.

“It’s the togetherness and the passing down of traditions that make this time so meaningful,” Ebbighausen-Smith said about family cookie creating. “You get to talking about family - `Do you remember the year we did this?’ Connecting the present with the past brings back memories that you don’t think about on a daily basis.”

Such connections provide stability for children, helping them form the basis of a healthy identity.

Baking also marks the seasons, Ebbighausen-Smith says. “Growing up, if it’s Christmas, we do taffy. Kitchen aromas - vanilla, melted chocolate, peppermint - remind us of the past, where we were, who we were with.”

Taking time during the holidays to create cookies with children doesn’t need to be time-consuming or complicated, Ebbighausen-Smith says. With families’ busy schedules in mind, she offers some shortcuts in the kitchen.

“Don’t bake them,” she says to parents who would prefer decorating to rolling dough. Visit a local bakery and pick up two dozen unfrosted cookies.

Another suggestion for simplicity: buy premade frosting. Though homemade frosting tastes better, plastic tubes of store-bought frostings will do the trick.

Next, cover the table with a plastic cloth, and arrange the cookies, candies, spreaders and frosting. Then call the kids.

“Kids want to get right to the decorating,” says Ebbighausen-Smith. “They want to come and make their creations, rather than wait for the baking and the cooling.”

Kids also want to get right to the eating. “When decorating cookies, kids are ready to eat. They’ll lick the frosting off a cookie and then redecorate it,” she says with a laugh.

In her classes, Ebbighausen-Smith sets aside smaller cookies for the kids to decorate and eat right away. She encourages them to decorate the bigger cookies to share with family or friends. “You’ve got to give kids a certain amount to eat,” she says. “Once they eat their fair share, then they’ll be ready to share with others.”

For the happiest kitchen memories, parents should refrain from offering too much direction when it comes to cookies.

“If they want cookies an inch thick, let them do it,” Ebbighausen-Smith says. “If they want to mix frosting colors, let them. There’s a tremendous amount of creativity that comes as a result.

“Not every culinary experience will be picture perfect. After all, this is family we’re talking about. With my children, there have been just as many forgettable moments as memory-making ones.”

(“I said melt the chocolate for TWO minutes, not twenty.” “Was that a cup of SALT you just added?”“That bottle you just used was glycerin, not vanilla flavoring.”)

Occasionally, harmony prevails. So do chocolate-covered grins and happy hearts. Those are the moments when it all seems worthwhile.

Like everything else about parenting, the process is just as important as the final product - with or without frosting.

This sidebar appeared with the story: Butter Cookie Cutouts

4 cups sifted all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 sticks unsalted butter

2 cups sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs. Add remaining ingredients and mix on low speed until combined. Chill dough for 30 minutes. Heat oven to 325 degrees. On a floured surface, roll dough to 1/8-inch thick. Cut into desired shapes. Transfer to ungreased baking sheets; refrigerate until firm, about 15 minutes.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until edges just start to brown. Cool on wire racks; decorate as desired. Makes two dozen cookies.

Buttercream Frosting

1 cup butter

3 to 3-1/2 cups powdered sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

Cream together butter with 1-1/2 cups sugar. Add vanilla. Add remaining sugar and blend until smooth. For colored frosting, add six drops coloring per one cup of frosting. For chocolate frosting, add 1/4-cup cocoa powder.