The winter is not complete without a holiday baking day. Two or three years ago Kaylee and I had our first holiday baking day together, she was three or four. She still remembers it and told everyone about our big day coming up this year. She remembered making gingerbread men and a gingerbread house together. We made sugar cookies in all different shapes. This year she's six and able to help more and ask many more questions. That's what we did last weekend. Went out to Rachel's house and created wonderful treats all day. I packed up my kitchen, bringing everything I thought we could run out of or would want to play with. Rachel lives in a beautiful, small island community on the river. There's a store, but if they have what we would want, it would probably cost more than I'd like. She was ready for us. There were gingerbread men ready to come out of the oven when we arrived, the house smelled like Christmas. Rachel was up early making dough and getting out her collection of supplies and decorations.
I am not sure how many different things we made, we played in the kitchen and made new memories all day. There were gingerbread men, thumbprint cookies, sugar cookies, shortbread moons, almond cookies, cheerful crispy rice treats, and homemade marshmallow wreaths. We worked well together in her small space, not getting in each others' way was easy. Both Rachel and I are at home in the kitchen and know how to move as we prepped, mixed, cleaned up as we went, and wrapped the final treats. We both like to cook with real food ingredients. We use our traditional grandmother's recipes omitting the dairy and eggs where we can, using natural unrefined sweeteners. Kaylee and Grandpa were great Sous chefs, taking on tasks as we needed them. They wrapped most of the treats individually to be made into holiday gifts later. Grandpa played with his new camera and caught the moments of the day.
~Peace~
