(Day 8 of the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories…Christmas Cookies)
I’ve always enjoyed baking, though I rarely do it anymore. My arthritis makes it difficult to get around the kitchen.
My speciality is chocolate stuffed peanut butter balls. They are small peanut butter balls with a couple of melted chocolate chips inside. I do the dairy free, vegan version and nobody knows the difference.
When my oldest niece was little, I always tried to get her over to my house during the holidays so we could make gifts for her parents and do some baking. One year, I decided we would do gingerbread men.
My niece was 5 or 6 years old at the time. We mixed the cookie dough and set up our baking sheets. She and I would roll the balls out and then combine them into men. We’d decorate them with stuff to make faces.
I had on holiday music in the background. We were singing and rolling. I must have gotten caught up in what I was doing because didn’t realize what was going on under my nose. I looked over to see how my niece was doing and she had flattened out every single ball that we had made! About 30 gingerbread balls all smashed into the baking sheets. LOL
I tried but there was no way to remove the balls from the sheets without crumbling them and having to reroll them all. An Aunt has to be adaptable. So, we made one tray of gingerbread men and another of gingerbread faces. They all tasted good, just some didn’t have bodies 😉
