Making Gingerbread Men

When my mom took Katie to one of her music classes, the teacher read a book about gingerbread men. She had asked for a volunteer to bake gingerbread cookies for class the next week. When no one else volunteered, my mom did. I've made lots of cookies before, but I had never made gingerbread men. I decided to give it a try since I knew Katie would enjoy helping. Her helping was a lot of watching me and talking about the ingredients she saw go in the bowl. She also got to help me stir the dry ingredients with her favorite whisk.

When it came time to roll out the dough, she saw my rolling pin, and she automatically thought of her Play-Doh rolling pin. She ran up to her room, with Aunt Jennifer's help, and returned with her rolling pin. Since I didn't think the other kids would want Play-Doh flavored gingerbread cookies, I gave Katie her own small piece of dough to roll while I rolled the rest. She rolled and rolled and rolled until her dough was paper thin. She had a hard time understanding why we couldn't pick up the gingerbread man that she had pressed into her dough.

The next day, I added white frosting decorations to the cookies. Katie watched me carefully, and she was excited when I gave her the extra frosting and cookies for her to decorate. She kept talking about how it was fun to use "toothpaste." I thought it was a good word for the frosting!

I started slowly and carefully.

My plan was to make buttons down the front.

My buttons grew.

This "toothpaste" is tricky stuff!

Ta-daaa!

I think my cookie looks pretty good.

Here are my finished products!