In December we do the Christmas cookies recipe at all our schools. We use the gingerbread dough, as that is the most popular dough for Christmas cookies. Parents are, however, welcome to use any suitable cookie recipe that they want. We start our class by playing Christmas songs such as “Santa Claus is coming to town “ and let the children join in and dance if they like. We then give them all dough, rolling pins and cutters and help them to cut out the various shapes: stars, Christmas trees, Christmas bells, ginger bread men, angels and whatever else we can related to Christmas.
Although this looks like only a fun class, there is a lot of stimulation involved. Sensory, for example the smelling and tasting of the ginger dough; fine motor skills when the children pick up the sprinkles to put on top of their cookies when decorating and gross motor skills when they roll out the dough. The finger muscles get exercised for writing when they squeeze the dough before we start rolling. We decorate with red, green and white icing in the end and put sprinkles and edible glitter on our cookies. Then it is time for eating!
Ingredients
Dough
230 g butter (softened)
2 tsp baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
2 cups of sugar
5 tsp ginger ( according to your own taste)
2 eggs
½ cup golden syrup
2 tsp cinnamon
4 -5 cups of cake flour
Pinch of salt (½ teaspoon)
Lemon icing
1 cup icing sugar
1 lemon, zested
3 tbsp lemon juice
Red and green food colouring
Decorations
Various cutters: stars, bells, ginger men, Santa Claus, Christmas Trees, etc.
Gold and silver balls for decorating, sprinkles, edible glitter (can be found at baking speciality shops)
Use salt shakers to sprinkle the table with flour for rolling out dough
Method for christmas cookies
Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.
Dough
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and mix well. Add golden syrup, mix well. Sift all dry ingredients together, add to butter mixture, mix well. Let dough rest in fridge for 30 minutes. Roll dough out for Christmas shapes and cut out shapes with cookie cutters.
Bake for 8-10 minutes at 180°C.
Icing
Sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Mix in the lemon rind , colouring and lemon juice for a slightly runny icing. Decorate the Christmas cookies!
This is an excellent idea to help young children to use their motorskills. It will also help the kids to learn how to bake and enjoy with mums during the holidays
Hi Elaine
thank you, yes you are correct,and everyone is having so much fun in the process! Retha Tiny Bakers