Christmas, Food, Link Party

Gingerbread Cookie Making for the Soul

Writer McWriterson
This felt like a good share for this second week in December. 🙂 
Also, keep the cards for my friend Tonda coming! 
If you missed Monday’s post, here is her address again. 

Tonda 

Oak Grove Manor

1670 Crider Road 

Mansfield, Ohio 44903

Attention: Allison

First published December 21, 2015

We have established that my youngest daughter likes gingerbread.
Making it, eating it, looking at it, bathing in it.
It started with my mom and her love of gingerbread.
When she lived closer, she would make a gingerbread house with my oldest daughter every Christmas.
Then when they moved away, they would keep up the tradition when we would visit them, but when little Ellie came along, my mom would also make gingerbread cookies for her to decorate so she would feel like we included her.
I believe the subliminal gingerbread making seeped into Ellie’s soul as her comfort Christmas time activity.
When I recently polled her for the One Word Holiday, she answered gingerbread for most of the questions so I made sure we had gingerbread cookies this year.

On the day we made the cookies, we didn’t have any brown sugar, and I didn’t feel like getting out of our jammies to run to the store to buy some, so instead, we made our own.

One tablespoon of molasses added to one cup of sugar makes homemade brown sugar in case you ever need some.

Ella got excited to make something from scratch that we usually buy at the grocery store.
The little things.

 

She wanted to arrange the gingerbread men cookie cutters to make a “cool photoshoot”.

 

She said I should know all of this because “you are a photographer, mom”.
Duh.

 

While she was making the dough, she asked me to tell her stories about her namesake, “Grandma Ella” and about how my grandma loved to bake. There is just something about listening to Christmas music, making cookies, and talking about memories.

 

I might be biased but I would say those are the best-darned gingerbread men I have seen in a long time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then it was time to ice the cookies!
Excuse my crappy cookie sheets.
I have real cookie sheets.
Real, ugly cookie sheets.

I thought after working all morning and afternoon on these cookies she would be tired and ask me to finish up.

 

Nope.
She forged ahead.

 

We use dip spreaders to ice cookies. It is so much easier for little hands.

 

We used tube icing from the store but making your own is pretty simple too.
I find that any icing I make though turns out a bit runny so today I decided to use store-bought.
I already made my brown sugar so that was enough little house on the prairie for one day.

 

Little hands frosting cookies make me so happy.

 

Our gingerbread cookies!
Maybe you need to make some for yourself today too.

A few days after we made these cookies, we were in the basement cleaning and I had found an old memory card with pictures on it.
It was of Annie making gingerbread cookies with me on that same cutting board.
I wanted to cry, go back, go forward, so many different emotions.
I think I’ll eat a cookie.

Head here for our favorite recipe.

17 thoughts on “Gingerbread Cookie Making for the Soul”

  1. This is such a sweet post, love the story and the photos, and those cookies look pretty yummy too! Thank you so much for linking up to Funtastic Friday, I enjoyed reading! Happy Thanksgiving!

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  5. Aw, what a sweet, sweet post! We just made some candy houses yesterday; one gingerbread from a kit and one using sugar cookies (since we aren’t gingerbread fans).

    Liked by 1 person

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  6. I love this post, Kari. So much sweetness in it, of so many kinds. I have the same kind of cookie sheets, and I also have a daughter named for my grandmother (both of them, actually). What I wouldn’t give to sit in that kitchen with you and make some cookies. I hope you’re doing OK.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  7. I love this post, Kari. So much sweetness in it, of so many kinds. I have the same kind of cookie sheets, and I also have a daughter named for my grandmother (both of them, actually). What I wouldn’t give to sit in that kitchen with you and make some cookies. I hope you’re doing OK.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      1. WordPress makes me do a signing in thing to post comments, and sometimes it seems to work and others it doesn’t. I am learning to copy my comments before attempting to post them, and if I’m not quite sure if it worked right, I’m going to post again! Ha! Take that, WordPress!

        Liked by 1 person

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