Baking, and Frosting, and Sprinkling– oh my!

We’ve had a good baking week this week.  Sunday Alexander and Muma made her favorite Linzer cookies– happy little jam filled stars cookies with cloves, cinnamon, and pecans.  They look like this (though I didn’t take a picture of mine before we ate most of them :0 !)

Tuesday, after the boys’ day with Nana, they all came over for supper and some Gingerbread train time.  Nana got this train for Alexander almost a week ago and we’ve had requests to put it together every day since, so he was pretty excited to get to finally put it together.  Nana set the foundation in the little tray and assembled the pieces together. She set the frosting glue, and Alexander spotted in all the little candies without regard to any picture of what it was supposed to look like.  He made it all his own, with some fun help by Nana and a couple from Muma.  Muma was on tip patrol who would set off a little siren sound when the train would start to lean too far before the frosting hardened.  (Though sometimes Alex would have to take over if Muma was too busy taking pictures)  Even Aidan got into the action, putting his morsels on the ‘blobs.’  “Tick!, Tick!”he’d say.  Of course we did have a couple of time-outs and scoldings for trying to eat all the little candies.  In the end, Alexander was so proud of their candy gingerbread train.  We sent a picture to Papa who was out at a meeting, and has been eager to show everyone who comes over his masterpiece, now stuffed with a cargo of happy candy canes.

Wednesday was sugar cookie day 1.  Muma made a quadruple batch of Aunt Carol’s cookie recipe in the morning, and friends came by in the evening for ravioli supper and the fantastic punching event.  Nana even made a surprise appearance to help and join in the fun.  We set up four chairs at the island and Aidan and Jonathan hopped up and down from time to time.  David and Alexander stepped up for the whole project, taking a few turns rolling out the dough and picking out their favorite cutters and learning how to put them close together like a puzzle.  Then it was their job to gather the scrap from in between the cut-outs while grown-ups spatulaed them on to the plate.  Again, we had to keep little mouths distracted from eating the dough, but the two little ones mostly had fun watching all the commotion and then heading back to the toy explosion in the living room.

Saturday night was the grand deco event.  We had soup, bread, chips vege-tray and M&M’s set for a light supper and munchies.  Nana was the first to arrive to help get things ready.  Then in came Grammy and Grampapa with an equally royal welcome by both little boys.  Mills buddies arrived just in time as the table was set with frosting bowls and Alexander had carefully opened each bottle of sprinkles.  This year, Alex & David were decorating fiends.  They knew all about spreading and sprinkling (and eating the broken ones).  Of course they still needed a little guidance, and decorating advice (like maybe we should switch frosting colors after the fourth blue bear).  Jonathan wasn’t so interested in the event (other than to eat one or two) but Aidan got into the mix, first decorating with Nana’s expertise, taking a break and coming back to help muma with a few.  He even got to munch a couple unfrosted little guys and an “emm” or two much to Papa’s dismay.  Speaking of SuperPapa, he frosted, helped boys, and critiqued for well over an hour before helping Aidan to bed and retiring to watch a more ‘manly’ movie with Grampapa.  Then the ladies got to do some pretty cookies while tykes played together.  Sammie had a 60’s flower and friendly reindeer, Grammy some happy snowmen, Nana’s were all equipped with loopy scarves and designer details, and Muma sprinkled some lovely presents and ornaments.  The cookies were done by 11 with everyone’s help (as opposed to 1am last year), with a massive clean-up made quick with many hands.  Another good round this year with treasures for everyone to take home and munch away…

And so concludes another cookie baking year.  We’ve got fixins for some banana bread this week, and one round of Papa’s favorite– the basic Chocolate Chip cookie.  He says that he just wants something he can eat without worrying about which ‘pretty’ one he picks.   And of course there’s cooking and yummies to be prepped for the other courses this week besides dessert… but who’s interested in that stuff??? :).  Here’s wishing a very yummy Christmas to all!