The Halloween Star
The kids and I made autumn cut-out cookies today. All told, it was a three-hour affair which exhausted me more than did the fitness class I led at the Y this morning.
The first step was to haul the Kitchen-Aid mixer out of the storage closet. I was remembering as I carried its heft up the stairs into our kitchen that this was the first thing we put on our bridal registry. In fact, I think every bridal registry I've ever seen has had one on it. But in carefully selecting its color and size, I don't imagine many brides-to-be envision using it with children as I did eight or so hours ago.
The first step in the process was to get the kids to sort through a sizeable box of cookie cutters (also received as a bridal gift, interestingly enough) and pick out the "autumn" ones. This was a strategic move intended to buy me enough time to get the dough mostly mixed without their "help."
When I turned to review their selections (which had been hotly debated as I creamed the butter and the sugar), I saw in the pile not just the familiar seasonal icons--the pumpkin, the leaves, and the tiny ghost--but also a heart, a candy cane, and a star. Big brother tried to convince me that the candy cane was indeed related to Halloween, but he wasn't sure exactly how. The heart I rejected outright. But when I suggested that the star, too, should go, he protested rabidly.
"It is TOO a Halloween thing, Mommy!" he insisted.
"Tell me how," I said.
"Well, we go out trick-or-treating at night, and we can look up at the stars when we're out there," he responded.
Fair enough. The star got to stay. And I tossed in an apple for good measure.
Every mother who's ever made cut-outs with her children knows how the next step went. I carefully rolled out a ball of dough, and our four-year-old promptly plunked a pumpkin directly in the center of it. Sigh. OK, I knew going in this wasn't going to be an exercise in efficiency, so I decided to just let go.
By the time we were halfway through the dough, I abondoned that carefree approach. I encouraged the kids to watch the last 12 minutes of Mr. Rogers so I could just get this thing over with. You should have seen me go!
Fast forward a couple of hours to when the cookies were completely cooled and ready for decorating. Our assortment of sprinkles and deco-gels was pretty pathetic, but I decided to make the best of it. We mixed yellow and orange icing (with a color-combining lesson tossed in for educational effect) and went for it. Pumpkins were mounded rather than sprinkled with little hills of chocolate jimmies and pastel flowers, then embellished with extremely unappetizing globules of black deco-gel. Mmmm, perhaps the unsightly appearance of the cookies would mean more for me...
The best part was clean-up, which the kids started in earnest even before the last of the icing had been applied. Spying errant frosting droplets and scattered sprinkles all over the protective sheet of waxed paper we'd lain on the butcher block table, they began tidying up in the only way they could conceive of--by smearing their fingers through the mess and licking them off. Over and over they smeared and licked, smeared and licked (I'd moved the cookies by then), establishing a boundary down the middle indicating each child's "territory," until the paper looked as though it had just been torn from its roll.
"There!" said our little guy with satisfaction, lifting the paper from the table. "Now we can use this stuff again!"
The first step was to haul the Kitchen-Aid mixer out of the storage closet. I was remembering as I carried its heft up the stairs into our kitchen that this was the first thing we put on our bridal registry. In fact, I think every bridal registry I've ever seen has had one on it. But in carefully selecting its color and size, I don't imagine many brides-to-be envision using it with children as I did eight or so hours ago.
The first step in the process was to get the kids to sort through a sizeable box of cookie cutters (also received as a bridal gift, interestingly enough) and pick out the "autumn" ones. This was a strategic move intended to buy me enough time to get the dough mostly mixed without their "help."
When I turned to review their selections (which had been hotly debated as I creamed the butter and the sugar), I saw in the pile not just the familiar seasonal icons--the pumpkin, the leaves, and the tiny ghost--but also a heart, a candy cane, and a star. Big brother tried to convince me that the candy cane was indeed related to Halloween, but he wasn't sure exactly how. The heart I rejected outright. But when I suggested that the star, too, should go, he protested rabidly.
"It is TOO a Halloween thing, Mommy!" he insisted.
"Tell me how," I said.
"Well, we go out trick-or-treating at night, and we can look up at the stars when we're out there," he responded.
Fair enough. The star got to stay. And I tossed in an apple for good measure.
Every mother who's ever made cut-outs with her children knows how the next step went. I carefully rolled out a ball of dough, and our four-year-old promptly plunked a pumpkin directly in the center of it. Sigh. OK, I knew going in this wasn't going to be an exercise in efficiency, so I decided to just let go.
By the time we were halfway through the dough, I abondoned that carefree approach. I encouraged the kids to watch the last 12 minutes of Mr. Rogers so I could just get this thing over with. You should have seen me go!
Fast forward a couple of hours to when the cookies were completely cooled and ready for decorating. Our assortment of sprinkles and deco-gels was pretty pathetic, but I decided to make the best of it. We mixed yellow and orange icing (with a color-combining lesson tossed in for educational effect) and went for it. Pumpkins were mounded rather than sprinkled with little hills of chocolate jimmies and pastel flowers, then embellished with extremely unappetizing globules of black deco-gel. Mmmm, perhaps the unsightly appearance of the cookies would mean more for me...
The best part was clean-up, which the kids started in earnest even before the last of the icing had been applied. Spying errant frosting droplets and scattered sprinkles all over the protective sheet of waxed paper we'd lain on the butcher block table, they began tidying up in the only way they could conceive of--by smearing their fingers through the mess and licking them off. Over and over they smeared and licked, smeared and licked (I'd moved the cookies by then), establishing a boundary down the middle indicating each child's "territory," until the paper looked as though it had just been torn from its roll.
"There!" said our little guy with satisfaction, lifting the paper from the table. "Now we can use this stuff again!"
posted by Lisa Strandberg at 8:21 PM
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