Cooking With My Kids... Let the Frosting Begin

Now that the dough has had plenty of time to chill, we are ready to make some cookies! You will need extra flour and (my secret ingredient) confectioners' sugar. If you replace about 50% of the flour with confectioners' sugar, you end up with a sweeter end product. This dough does not take a lot of extra flour anyway, but you want to add in enough so that the dough isn't sticky. This will make it easier to roll out.

Sprinkle your surface with flour/confectioners' sugar and grab your favorite rolling pin and some cookie cutters. I thought about covering every inch of my kitchen with newspaper to keep the flour from covering every inch, but I figured that it probably wouldn't help. If you can't stand the mess, I suggest that you buy Oreos. You have been warned.

Let the mayhem begin. I like to roll out the dough to about 1/4 to 1/2 inches thick. I love thicker sugar cookies. If you let kids do the roll out the dough, anticipate the dough being 1/782 inches thick. Especially Maddux, he likes the dough to be flat. I think he just likes the rolling pin. Haley, Breuklyn's friend from Kindergarten, wasn't exactly sure what to think of all the flour flying.

The kids abandoned me to play Candy Land and I stared at the mess for a while. Then I baked the cookies. Place your cookies about an inch apart on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake at 400 degrees for 6-8 minutes.

Now let's make some frosting! This is really easy. I used 4 cups of confectioners' sugar, 1/2 c. shortening, 5 T. milk and 1 tsp. vanilla. I knew that I was going to be coloring all of my frosting with Wilton food colors, so I used butter-flavored Crisco shortening. If you are going to need white frosting, you need to use regular shortening and perhaps even the clear vanilla extract.

I know you don't want to, but you need to sift the 4 cups of confectioners' sugar. There is nothing worse then biting into a clump of sugar in an otherwise smooth frosting.

Cream the shortening.

Add the vanilla.
Add the confectioners' sugar. Slowly. Seriously. Unless you are planning on changing the colors of your cabinets to snowstorm white you need to slowly add the confectioners' sugar. Once the sugar has been combined, slowly add the 5 Tablespoons of milk, one tablespoon at a time. You may not need all of the milk or you might need a little more, just depending on that pesky thing called humidity. You are looking for a smooth consistency.

It will look like this. I just want to dive in. Yum.

I separated the frosting into 4 bowls so that I could tint them with the Wilton colors.

Isn't frosting more fun when it is brightly colored?

Grab some sprinkles. These were 3 of the 11 bottles of sprinkles that were in with my spices. Where did they all come from? I could make one heck of a birthday cake.

Haley is contemplating her frosting options.

Of course Breuklyn chose green, her favorite color.

Even though a huge big mess was made, it was worth it. The cookies were cakey and very soft, even the next day. I cut out two dozen tulip shaped cookies out of my very own no kids fingers allowed dough so that I can take some to Nan. Brad has eaten a dozen of the cookies and he is hooked. He doesn't even like cookies and he says they are amazing. That is an opinion you can trust. Make some! You'll be hooked too!