Three in One Cookies

We were trapped inside, all day, yesterday, by gloomy skies, and a freezing drizzle, of all things. I'd never even heard of a freezing drizzle before, but believe me, it's as miserable as it sounds. By evening though, it turned to big, beautiful, fluffy white snowflakes. Which, are still no good for getting out, and about in, especially on top of a freezing drizzle, but which did put us back into the holiday mood.

So, I pulled out the Christmas books, and the sugar cookie dough, and we went to work.

In Lillian Hoban's Arthur's Christmas Cookies, Arthur wants to make Christmas cookies, as a Christmas gift. When he mistakes the salt for the sugar, though, it takes some fast thinking, and a little paint, to save the day. And, while he doesn't end up with cookies, he does make some lovely ornaments, instead.

We wanted to end up with cookies, so we stuck with sugar, instead of salt, and used food coloring instead of paint. Green, and yellow food coloring to be precise...

...leaving a third of the dough white, for snowmen. Sorry about the dark pictures, but the day was really that gloomy.

We decorated them with mini chocolate chips.

And, gave them a quick powdered sugar, sprinkling once they were baked.

Then, we moved on to green Christmas trees...

...and yellow stars.

We cut the centers out of the stars...

...and made holes in the trees, with the cap from our food coloring bottle...

...lifting the dough out with a toothpick...

...and filling it with crushed candy pieces, for a stained glass look.

For the candy, we used cherry, and butterscotch Lifesavers, and a few butterscotch candies from the bulk bin, at the grocery store.

The cherry Lifesavers worked fine, but the individual butterscotch candies were better than the butterscotch Lifesavers for both color, and texture, for melting inside the cookies, as they baked.

The stars baked, as normal, for 10 minutes, in a 350 degree oven. While the trees baked for 8 minutes, without candy, and then the last two after the candy was added.

It's great to be a homeschooler.