If you’re like me, you pat yourself on the back in early December because the Christmas shopping is done. But wait! If you’re like me you also forget about the service people until the 11th hour — in my case, the day before the last day of school. By “service people” I mean the wonderful bus drivers, teachers, aids and babysitters who look after my kids while I’m eating bonbons, watching Days of our Lives and otherwise having fun.
Now you’ve remembered them, the big question is, what to get them? I used to go for gift cards until I received a Starbucks card as a thank you and realized what a pain it is to go there and actually use it. So this year I got the kids involved and we baked a lot of cookies.
Cookie presents: simply bake, pack and deliver.
First we made my oatmeal craisin white chocolate chip cookies (very festive). The next day we baked traditional gingersnaps (see recipe, below). Avery did the mixing and Bennett dumped in the ingredients after I measured. When they cooled we packed them into some holiday tins I picked up at Dollarama.
Buy $1 festive tins at Dollarama and voila! Done.
Just make sure you bake enough cookies so there are some left over for the little helpers.
Bake extras so the kids can indulge too. And don't forget about Santa!
Here’s the gingersnaps recipe I used from Betty Crocker. Enjoy!
Gingersnaps
1 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup shortening (or substitute butter)
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour*
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. salt
Granulated sugar
Mix brown sugar, shortening, molasses and egg. Stir in flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and salt. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour.
Heat oven to 375F. Shape dough by rounded teaspoonfuls into balls. Dip tops in granulated sugar. Place balls, sugared side up, about 3 inches apart on lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake cookies until just set, about 10 to 12 minutes. Immediately remove from cookie sheet. Yield: about 4 dozen cookies; 85 calories per cookie.
*If using self-rising flour, decrease baking soda to 1 tsp. and omit salt.
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