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I am on a mission to save money and spread cheer this holiday season, and one of the things I want to do is bake lots and lots of cookies! I have been making time at night during the week and on the weekends to get some baking done. Everything I make is getting frozen, so that just before Christmas I can put together cookie gifts for our friends and family.
Cookie #1 - Gingerbread
I was lazy with my first cookie, and I used a store-bought mix (shh!) Andrew loves gingerbread, and I have tried several different "from scratch" recipes, but they always turn out awful. This year, I decided to hedge my bets and use a mix.
I cut the gingerbreads into stars and gingerbread men. I got about 3 dozen shapes, rolling the dough to about a quarter inch thick. I hate waste, so I rolled out the bits of leftover dough and used a mini cookie cutter to cut small flower shapes. I got a dozen little flowers out of that little bit of dough! You can see the flowers on the rack below the men in this photo.
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I let Andrew have two of the first batch - the star-shaped cookies - as a snack, then as I was taking the men off the tray, I broke two of them! So he got to bring those to work the next day.
Baking is already starting to put me in the holiday spirit!