recipe reading (and cookie-eating)

Today was our holiday cookie-baking day. We baked a million cookies, and we're still not finished.

As Maddy's becoming a stronger reader, she has really enjoyed trying her hand at handling the recipe-reading herself. And with this recipe, I formatted the 'Directions' differently than I had before, with our muffin-making or fun with that ginormous zucchini.

This time, I roughly followed the structure of Mollie Katzen's series--frame-by-frame instructions. But I simplified it just a bit, and it seemed to work well.

• Recipe-Reading--Iced Pumpkin Cookies: We love these sweet cakey-cookies, and I (shhhh!) decided to make them again for my yearly cookie exchange with friends.
  

It's an easy recipe, and Maddy, Owen, and Cora get a kick out of adding all of the spices. Plus, the cookies are nut-free, so my pals with allergies in the family can also enjoy them.

Maddy's adding spices. . .

The Kid-Friendly Iced Pumpkin Cookies Recipe is here to download. But if you're exchanging with your pals, why reinvent the wheel--the Mom's Cookie Exchange Iced Pumpkin Cookies Recipe is also here to download.

Because the recipe calls for ground cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and pumpkin--on top of the normal sugar, butter, egg, my kids seem to especially like making these. And every single time--every time--they want to try each spice.

. . . and Cora's giving the spices a taste.

So I make tiny piles of the ingredients and let them taste each. Sure, every time Maddy, Owen, or Cora tastes cloves or nutmeg, they stick out their tongue and yell for water, but usually an M & M clears their tiny palates quickly. I think it's great to get kids familiar with the differences between salt, sugar, flour, and anything that's safe to try.

The Pampered Chef cookie ballers
(or whatever they're called. . . ) really make the job easier.

I slipped the recipe sheets into plastic sleeves so that the kids could write on them with crayon and then wipe it off for next time. As we completed each step of the recipe, Maddy put a check in the appropriate box, just like she did as we gathered our ingredients before we began.

Our finished Iced Pumpkin Cookies

Our finished products tasted great and looked pretty darn good, too.

And that's it for today. . . tons of cookies baked, and my little emerging readers got some practice reading and following the steps to the recipe as well.

Pour the milk, put some cookies on a plate, and let's eat some sweets!