Gingerbread Cookies

Zahra seems to be quite fond of the children's books by Jan Brett. I don't know if it's the pictures or what, but every time we are in the B section of the library, she seems drawn to her books. We've read several of them many times. We had borrowed "Gingerbread Baby" a while back. Then, the other day, this was one of the books that Mrs. Conton read to the class while I was volunteering. Since I remembered Zahra liked it, I made sure that we borrowed it from the library again so she could make the connection with the book she had listened to in class. Since there is a little boy who tries to make gingerbread men in the story, she wanted to do the same. (In the story, however, the boy isn't patient enough to let the gingerbread men cook in the oven and he opens the door to early and a little gingerbread baby pops out and runs away. A chase ensues and the story takes off from there.)

I found a recipe online for chocolate gingerbread cookies, since I didn't think Zahra or I would really like plain gingerbread. The dough came out very chocolatey, but a little on the plain side.

So Friday after school, we went to the store to pick up the ingredients we didn't have. We also looked for cookie cutters but they didn't have any at the grocery store, so we went to Michael's. They didn't have any little people shapes, so we settled for a bear shape and a heart. Here's Zahra pouring in the molasses. We had a bit of a molasses accident prior to this shot and somehow the sticky stuff dripped all down the side of the cabinet. After that was cleaned up, we proceeded with caution. For a five year old, Zahra did pretty well with listening to directions and actually participating in helping me to combine everything.

Here she's mixing the melted unsweetened chocolate, butter, and molasses mix to the flour, baking soda, baking powder, etc. mix.

Although she looks like she's having fun here, she said she didn't like the process of rolling out the dough between two sheets of wax paper.

After the cookies were baked, Zahra did most of the decorating. I think this was the best part for her.

The sprinkles came out SO fast! I had sprinkles everywhere! All over the counter, in the sink, on the floor. I had to do a lot of cleaning to get the kitchen back to normal. But, in the end, I thought it was all worth it. I think Zahra enjoyed making the cookies and was proud of herself for helping me. She shared some with the neighbors and her Grandma.

Here's one of the finished-product cookies. The end!