Holiday Kitchen Fun

We love to make Christmas treats at our house. One of our latest traditions has been the Cookie Exchange at my Grandma's house. Kailyn and I busied ourselves in preparation of this fun cookie filled day. We made Peanut Butter Cup Cookies. They are easy to make and a sure favorite! We got on our cookie-making gear, it's just more fun in an apron and baker's hat! Kailyn helped a bunch with unwrapping the peanut butter cups. She even was a big help rolling the dough into little balls. I have included the recipe for you to try out yourself.

• Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
  INGREDIENTS
  1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  1/2 teaspoon salt
  1 teaspoon baking soda
  1/2 cup butter, softened
  1/2 cup white sugar
  1/2 cup peanut butter
  1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  1 egg, beaten
  1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  2 tablespoons milk
  40 miniature chocolate covered peanut butter cups, unwrapped
  DIRECTIONS
  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
  Sift together the flour, salt and baking soda; set aside.
  Cream together the butter, sugar, peanut butter and brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg, vanilla and milk. Add the flour mixture; mix well.
  Shape into 40 balls and place each into an ungreased mini muffin pan.
  Bake at 375 degrees for about 8 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately press a mini peanut butter cup into each ball. Cool and carefully remove from pan.

The next thing on our list was gingerbread men. My kids love the gingerbread man story!! I cheated this year by buying the ready made gingerbread cookie dough. It was so easy and tastes really good. Thanks Pillsbury! They rolled and cut out the little men. We have a running gingerbread man and regular gingerbread man. Javin entertained us with his retelling of the story and the many variations he has heard. Later in the day we decorated our men with icing and mini M&M's. Yum! The green and blue one that Javin is holding is his depiction of me.

Then we moved on to constructing a gingerbread house for our men. In the past, we have bought the kit from a store. That was always fun, but I never let them eat it, who knows what they put in those things to make them last so long! So this year we tried making the house out of graham crackers. The challenging part was making the royal icing to hold it all together. It is supposed to be really stiff when it dries. I don't think I have that part down yet. It was a little runny and adding more and more powdered sugar wasn't helping. But they stayed together. So now our men have houses! Fun times!