Gingerbread Men

I knew my nephews were coming

over today so I quick mixed up

a recipe of gingerbread men.

I was thinking how much fun

it would be for Austin and Sawyer

to cut out cookies and then ice

and decorate them.

Have any of you every thought

it would be a great idea to decorate

cookies with a 4 year old and a 2 year old?

Half way through decorating I

was regretting my idea of fun.

I was standing in sprinkles,

watching boys load cookies with sprinkles,

mixing colors of sprinkles together and

licking their fingers to get the sprinkles off.

I was hollering at Faith to come see how

cute it was at first, then I was hollering

because I needed help. As soon as I had

one reigned in on how many sprinkles

to use the other one was mixing handfuls

of sprinkles. Faith just laughed and said,

"I decorated cookies with them last week."

She was already seasoned in this area.

Then she starts taking photos
of them making a mess.

The cookies really are delicious,

even though all you can see is sprinkles.

Austy cutting out his cookies.

Sweet imperfection.

Cookies ready to be layered in sprinkles.

It started out fine with Austy until Sawyer woke up.
Then it looked like this...

No caption needed.

Why not add some red to the white?

He dumped a pile of sprinkles on and I told

him it was way too much. He happily grabbed

the dish cloth and wiped some off.

The finished product! I really did have fun.

Gingerbread Men

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup molasses

1 Tbsp. vinegar

1 egg, beaten

4 3/4 cup flour

2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. ginger

Cream butter and sugar. In the microwave, heat molasses until

almost boiling. Pour molasses over sugar mixture and add vinegar.

Mix well and cool mixture to lukewarm. Mix in egg.

Sift dry ingredients and mix together.

Chill dough for several hours.

Roll out to about 1/4 in. thick and cut into men.

Bake at 350 for 8 minutes.

Do not over bake. If you do they

are more like gingersnaps. Top with icing.

Decorate as desired.

*this cookie recipe is from Esther Shank

Creamy White Icing

1 cup Crisco

 4 cups 10x sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

4 Tbsp. milk

Mix until creamy.

Have fun,

Hope