The 11th Day of Christmas with Jill Savage of Hearts at Home
Welcome to the 7th annual 12 Days of Christmas Giveaways!!!
12 Days.
12 friends guest posting sharing a Christmas idea, recipe or favorite with you.
12 great giveaways for you to enter along with one GRAND PRIZE for someone who comments to enter all 12 days!!
Today’s guest is my dear friend Jill Savage.
Jill Savage is an author, speaker, and Founder and CEO of Hearts at Home, an organization for moms. The upcoming Hearts at Home conference will feature keynote speakers Lysa TerKeurst and Dr. Gary Chapman as well as dozens of practical workshops. Jill’s books include the bestselling No More Perfect Moms, Real Mom…Real Jesus, Living With Less So Your Family Has More, and No More Perfect Kids. A mother of five and Nana of 3, Jill and her husband Mark make their home in Central Illinois.
Jill writes about faith, family, motherhood, and marriage. To receive encouragement from Jill, you can subscribe here to receive her emails and when you do you’ll receive a free printable of I Corinthians 13 for Parents from her No More Perfect Kids book.
And now here is my good friend, Jill, to tell us How To Successfully Bake Cut-Out Christmas Cookies with your Children.
I’ve been baking Christmas cookies with my kids for 29 years. Through many disappointments and trials and errors, I’ve finally learned how to do it well at every stage of mothering. Let me share my secrets with you!
Here’s the recipe I use:
Christmas Cut-Out Cookies
1/2 c. Crisco
1 stick butter
1 c. sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 tsp vanilla
3-1/2 c. of flour (I usually add more until the dough isn’t sticky)
Chill 1 hour. Roll 1/4? thick with rolling pin. (I disinfect my kitchen island and roll the dough right on the counter top. Make sure and flour the surface you are rolling on and flour the rolling pin–just rub flour all over it–so the dough doesn’t stick)
Use cookie cutters for shapes. Bake 400 degrees for 6-8 minutes until shine is off (do not overcook–you don’t want them brown on the edges)
Icing
2 sticks butter (softened–I leave the sticks on the counter for about 30 min)
4-1/2 – 4-3/4 c. powdered sugar (I usually add more until it peaks when you mix it)
1/2 c. milk
1-1/2 tsp vanilla or peppermint (we use peppermint!)
Beat butter to fluffy and add 1/2 of the powdered sugar. Add milk and vanilla and rest of sugar. Divide into smaller bowls and add food coloring as desired (we usually do red, green, blue, yellow, and white)
Note: Cookies can be frozen either before icing or after icing, if you want to decorate or eat at a later time.
Here’s how to successfully make cut-out cookies with kids of any age:
Preschool Years:
1) Day 1: You make and chill dough while they are napping.
2) Day 2: You cut out and bake cookies while they are napping.
3) Day 2 or 3: You make icing and ice the cookies
4) Your preschooler can put sprinkles on while the icing is still wet.
5) Enjoy eating, giving away, and sharing the yummy cookies you made!
Grade School Years
1) You make and chill the dough
2) You roll out the dough and let them use the cookie cutters to cut out the shapes
3) You put them in the oven.
4) Once all the cookies are cool, the kids and you can ice them and decorate with sprinkles. (this can also be done on the next day if cookies are stored in an airtight container.)
5) Enjoy!
Note: Grade school years is a great time to teach your kids to make cookies from scratch. Since Christmas cookies have five parts to them–1) making the recipe 2) chilling the dough 3) rolling the dough and cutting the cookies 4) baking the cookies 5) decorating the cookies—I find this isn’t the best time to teach them to bake. The process is too long and they are impatient to get to the cutting out and decorating. Teach them to follow a recipe some other time with something like Chocolate Chip cookies or Oatmeal Raisin Cookies that you just mix up, bake, and eat!
Teen Years
1) You make and chill the dough (if you have a teen that wants to do that, let them!)
2) You show them how to roll out the dough and cut out the cookies, then let them do it themselves!
3) You help with the baking.
4) Enjoy decorating the cookies with your family!
Even when the dough is already made and chilled, it’s usually about a 3 hour process to roll out the dough, cut out the cookies, bake, and decorate them. That’s why I’m a believer in already having the dough made and chilled no matter the age of the kids!
Once I bake and decorate cookies with my kids, I want to sit back with a book and a cup of tea!
And now……The Giveaway:
Jill is giving away this wonderful “Christmas Cookie Recovery Gift Basket” that includes all kinds of goodies like: signed copies of No More Perfect Moms and No More Perfect Kids, two Charlene Baumbich books, a No More Perfect Moms video curriculum DVD, a Fatherhood Rocks thermal cup, and a Hearts at Home mug.
After you bake those cookies you can sit back and enjoy a little “me” time!
What about you? What holiday baking traditions does your family have? Tell us about it in the comment section for a chance to win Jill’s giveaway.
One of our Christmas morning traditions is to have Sausage Balls for breakfast and then open presents……..love this time with our family!
My “babies” are now 31, 28, and 18. When the two oldest were small, we would attempt gingerbread (graham cracker) houses which were fun although not so pretty! My youngest liked making sugar cookies and decorating them. Last year (at 17) I made the cookies and he decorated a few – sort of sad, ya know? But I am going to ask again and we’ll see how much he loves his Momma! ;)
As a kid growing up, we would decorate cookies with my mom. I did not get the baking gene (most of my baking doesn’t turn out); so we don’t do a lot of holiday baking, unless my husband does it.
I liked making sugar tops with Mum when my sister and I were little:
½lb self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
5 oz butter
¼lb caster/icing sugar
Beaten egg
Sift flour and salt into bowl. Rub in butter finely. Add sugar. Mix to very stiff dough with beaten egg. Turn out onto lightly-floured board. Knead gently until smooth. Put into polythene bag or wrap in aluminium foil. Chill for 30 minutes.
Roll out fairly thinly. Cut into rounds with 2-inch plain or fluted biscuit-cutter. Transfer to buttered baking trays. Prick biscuits well with fork. Brush with
lightly-beaten egg-white and sprinkle with caster sugar.
Bake in centre of oven (180°c) for about 12-15 minutes. Leave on trays for 2-3 minutes. Transfer to wire cooling rack and store in air-tight tin when cold.
I’m not a very good baker , but one thing that I do make that my family loves, is sugar cookies. It has been such a tradition that our kids would decorate them each Christmas and had so much fun that their friends would come over and decorate them, too. The kids and their friends decorated cookies even as teenagers through high school and some when they would come home from college! Those are such good memories.
Jill,
Thank You for the recipe for the perfect sugar cookies recipe! I had an embarrassing cookie incident last year. I was running out of time and used a “box mix cookie dough” to make Sugar cookie “Gingerbread” men. I had focused so hard on the Williams Sonoma Cookie Cutters and spelling out “Merry Christmas” on the cookies that I did not allow my homemade dough enough time to chill in the refridgerator. I grabbed an emergency box mix and Boom! …Horribly malformed cookies, which had to be eaten immediately to hide the evidence. I was late delivering cookies to the teachers’ lounge. I definitely could have used that recipe last year.
My family has a decades old tradition of making a huge homemade gingerbread village (the size of my mother’s breakfast table) and then giving it away to needy children along with gifts. The look on their little faces when they see all of that candy, is honestly PRICELESS!
My grandma’s recipe for poor man cookies is similar to sugar cookies, but less sweet and the recipe makes a ton!
I love baking in general so we bake cookies all the time!
We enjoy making sugar cookies together as well as shortbread. All the other baking is mine to do as long as they get to help with the cookie cutting and decorating.
Baking cookies and treats is essential to our family Christmas traditions and so fun! We also make buche de Noel.
Drop sugar cookies and we make a birthday cake for Jesus to follow our Christmas feast!
Every year always bake different types of cookies. One favorite is Molasses cookies, a recipe that was handed down in the family. We also make homemade gift baskets which have cookies, homemade dehydrated fruits, cowboy bark, homemade jerky. It is hard sometimes to figure out what to get someone so we started doing these because you can’t go wrong with something yummy that is homemade. Are kids help out with it all too makes them feel special and a part of the giving too.
Our holiday baking includes mainly snack items….so we don’t have to cook big meals on holidays!
We also always do Christmas cookies but my childrens favorite is to make toffee.
My mother-in-law makes her sugar cookie recipe from scratch and cuts out the cookies the day before we plan to ice them. Then, grandma, me, and my two girls sit and frost and decorate the cookies while listening to Christmas music. I really enjoy this time together and so does grandma and the kids.
I also have fond memories of my dad baking cookies. Every year he made about 7 different kinds of cookies. I always enjoyed watching him, smelling them bake. He still bakes many of those to this day (I think he’s 68 years old).
My girls and I had cookie baking parties at church. Bring the chilled dough, 4 ovens, sing, dance , get flour on each other, decorate and clean the church.
This year they are all gone, I gave two of them new cookie spatulas and the newly wed some Family Christmas cookie cutters. I collect cookie cutters, so I had a set to spare. Love the oldies, but got to love tupperwear.
I live alone so I don’t have any baking traditions. Each year my sister’s family bakes the same cookies. I have a feeling that this year my 13 year old niece will do some of the baking herself like she did for Thanksgiving.
I use to make fudge, but this year I changed it up. I made Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Bars! One recipe makes two pans, so they go a long way – which means I can give them to lots of people.
We try to balance old favorites with trying at least one new thing each year – last year I made lefse by myself for the first time!
We make candies every year. Chocolate dipped pretzels,
Buckeyes, chocolate covered peanuts and whatever else we
Feel like doing. I do it with my little brother and we have fun together.
My Grandma used to due caramels and English toffee and peanut brittle
Until she passed away 3 years ago. Those things always make me think of her.
Baking and Candy making our favorites. Also, a Traditional English dinner for Christmas eve. Nummy and a Fun tradition!!!!! Merry Christmas!!!!!
We always bake sugar cookies to frost and decorate.
I love the recipes. Could you make them printable? Thanks!
I try to enjoy sugar cookie cutouts with the kids throughout the year- not just at christmas–so glad to see your hints were ones i’ve used! The “Mom” still does most of the work in the multie hour process–but the memories are worth it!
My husband loves to make chocolate pie & rum cake. The kids and I enjoy making pound cake and cookies of all kinds!