‘Tis the season for the annual gingerbread cookie factory!
Over the years our lives have become busier from homeschooling, so I try to make everything as efficient as possible.
DECORATING WORKSHOP
The day after Thanksgiving we take advantage of the long weekend by beginning our Christmas decorating.
While playing Christmas carols the kids are taking over more of the decorating, which frees me up for some kitchen work.
Since we love appetizers, I usually create a few to keep handily in access on the island for those who want to grab a bit in between Christmas preparations.
For dinner we enjoy turkey leftovers.
In between I whip up batches of some of our favorite no-stress Christmas cookies: magic cookie bars, dark chocolate fudge, and bark.
Then I mix the ingredients for spicy gingerbread cookies.
Once the dough is assembled, I flatten the dough out in baggies to store in the fridge to bake later.
This year we saw the Nutcracker with the Moscow Ballet on Thanksgiving weekend, which highly added to the festivities.
BAKING GINGERBREAD COOKIES
So, this first weekend of December the kids baked the gingerbread cookies.
Although last Christmas was our first to use our new kitchen as a cookie factory, this year I bought a new gadget to expedite things.
Since my huge marble cutting board broke a few years ago, it’s been a struggle to efficiently roll anything out, so I saved up some money to buy this butcher block pastry board from William-Sonoma.
While the benefit of marble is that the cold surface requires little flour when rolling out dough, the asset with wood is that it won’t break!
After using my marble rolling pin to roll out the cookie dough, they cut out the cookies, then carefully moved them to a parchment-covered cookie sheet.
With our wonderfully long countertops of the u-shaped kitchen, we have a perfect landing zone for cookies coming out of the oven (which is barely seen in the left side of the photo, below).
Easily removing the cookie sheet from the oven and setting it atop the stove, we relocate each cookie to the cooling rack.
Cooled cookies are moved from the cookie rack to the air tight bowl until they are decorated.
In the photo above, the counter tops allow plenty of room for me to also spread all our recipes and special baking ingredients, ready for our busy cookie factory.
Also in the photo above, are freshly baked pfefferneuse…a spicy cookie dusted with white powdered sugar.
BAKING CLEANUP A SNAP
I just love the ease of parchment paper on the baking sheets, since nothing sticks and the pan remains clean.
The butcher block also simplies cleanup, since all I have to do is move it to the sink, then use my dough scraper to scrape all the extra flour and dough to put into the trash.
Then I scrape harder to get all the dough off and into the trash.
After that a good wipe down with a soapy dishcloth, rinse down with a clean cloth, then wipe down with a dry towel.
Wood doesn’t like to stay wet, so immediate drying is a must.
To my surprise, I found a clean kitchen when I walked in to clean it.
Proving how easy it is to clean up, my kids quickly did what they always see me do!
COOKIE DECORATING FACTORY
In our earlier years, we conquered our gingerbread cookies on Thanksgiving weekend: dough prep and house decorating on Friday, baking on Saturday, and decorating on Sunday.
But as they grew, they take more time with their projects and our social calendar fills up.
Meanwhile our baked gingerbread cookies safely remained fresh in air tight containers, until we have time, whether it’s the next day or next week: as we homeschool, shop for Christmas, and pursue other activities.
Expediting our time, I buy cute seasonal vinyl tablecloths, to protect our fancy island while we work on messy projects.
Again, cleanup is a snap by simply wiping down the tablecloth, folding it away for future use, and a quick run of the floor with a vacuum cleaner.
Although I’m not a huge fan of processed foods, this year I caved with the simplicity of the icing in a can.
Squirt and done!
Again, the kids thoroughly cleaned the kitchen without my even asking them to do that! =)
And honestly, this massive batch of gingerbread dough can easily be cut into thirds…which will save us more time in the future: batch one for Christmas, batch two for snowflake cookies in January, batch three for Valentine cookies in February!
The photo below is from last Christmas Eve in our new kitchen, preparing our finger foods to enjoy while watching It’s a Wonderful Life!
Looking forward to this year’s Christmas Eve, too! Such a wonderful time of year to celebrate our Lord!
