Recently my son started to show interest in helping me and my hubby to do all tasks from housework to gardening, baking and even washing dishes. It is really fun to involve them in the process as they will learn more. Of course, don't expect them to do a very clean job. The most important is they enjoy the process, have fun and learn something.
One of the very first baking I did with my son was making shortbread cookies. I let my son help me with putting the ingredient in the mixer and turning on the mixer. He will then sit besides the mixer and watched how the ingredients get mixed up and of course asking thousands of questions. After the dough was made, I divided it into two portions. I mixed one of the portion with chocolate. The dough was quite soft and needed to put in refrigerator for a while before we can shape it.
I have a few cookies cutter. I let my son used the easy one which is a star shape and a gingerbread man shape. When he cut the dough with gingerbread man cutter, he told us that gingerbread man will run away from oven and will chase by chicken and cow. Both me and chun were puzzled. We not really understand what he was talking about and we also realized that we both didn't even know what gingerbread man story was.
While my son and my hubby making the cookies using cookies cutter, I played with mixing two colors dough. I used to see checkerboard cookies in bakery shop and always wondering how to do it. So I tried to roll 2 logs of different color dough and then stick them together. Putting the, in the refrigerator to make the dough harden before cutting it. The color looks good when I cut it. I then tried out some others way to mix the two colors dough.
We had a lot of fun shaping and decorating the cookies. Making cookies is really a good family activity. My son really excited when seeing the cookies is baked and immediately ate them. After baking with him for the first time, he told me that I need to wait for him to bake next time and cannot curi-curi baking while he is not around. :)
That night, I did a quick search online to see what gingerbread man story was about and finally I know what my son was talking about. :)
Recipe for shortbread cookies:
1 cup (2 sticks) I unsaltedbutter (soften)
1 and 1/2 cup of all purpose flour
1/2 cup of corn flour
1/2 cup of sugar (I reduced this a little bit as I don't like the cookies to be too sweet)
1/4 tsp of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
Steps:
1. Cream sugar and butter until smooth.
2. Add vanilla extract and salt.
3. Slowly add in flour until well mixed.
4. Divide the dough to two portion. Add melted chocolate, chocolate powder and sugar to chocolate dough.
4. Put the doughs in refrigerator for 30min before shaping it.
5. Bake in oven at 350F for about 10 minutes or till the cookies lightly browned.
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| shortbread cookies |
