Kids Cuisine

It just wouldn’t be Christmas without the aroma of baking cookies and vision of candy-striped sweets marching forth from my kitchen. And no cooking or baking experience is more tempting to my children than when the results involve cookie dough, frosting, moist cakes, and fresh-out-of-the-oven treats: “Honey, would you like to help me steam asparagus, or would you rather make gingerbread?” No contest.

And so it is this year, many hands helping me bake goodies for friends and neighbors, school teachers, art and music teachers, and unsuspecting helpers in our lives like the postman, dry cleaner, coach, and pharmacist. Each year we get to play with ideas: Shall we bake a tray of festive cookies? Make specialty sweet breads? Sweet and spicy nuts? Give them summer yummies canned into glass jars?

This year we mixed it up, handing out blueberry chutney that I jarred mid-summer, piling easy-to-make peppermint bark in cellophane wrap with pretty ribbons, rolling snowball cookies in confectioners sugar (though these may not make it out of our kitchen) and delivering mini loaves of eggnog pound cake to teachers and neighbors. Don’t forget to peek at the mountain of cookies and goodies that are spread across the blogosphere and World Wide Web. A few kid-friendly, kitchen-helper choices include peanut butter sandwich cookies, ginger pecans, seasonal cupcakes, or this long list of Christmas cookies.