5 Reasons To Bake Holiday Cookies With Your Kids Plus 4 Easy Recipes

Posted on Dec 19, 2016 | 0 comments

Given the fast pace of society today, not many of us actually stop to take the time to bake cookies, as opposed to just buying them, with our kids. And with so many delicious bakeries and options out there, who can blame us?!

The holidays always fly by with a whirlwind of tinsel, mistletoe and holiday parties. I always intend to have a holiday cookie baking day and then all of sudden… it is after New Years! But this year, I carved out a whole day for baking holiday cookies with my kids, and I always will from now on.

Here is why.

5 Reasons To Bake Holiday Cookies With Your Kids

They learn the important basic cooking skills everyone needs to know. At a time when 3^rd generation non-cooks are appearing everywhere and we are having a health crisis, any opportunity to learn how to cook from scratch is a good opportunity – especially when it involves cookies!! I have the kids help with everything from reading the recipe to finding the ingredients, to measuring and mixing and finally the cooking – all things they need to know how to do to survive.
It encourages good math skills. While they are figuring out how much of each ingredient they need as we may be doubling or tripling the recipe, they are gaining an important perspective of real life math with the end motivation being something yummy to eat!
It improves teamwork skills. Cooking together in the kitchen (and then cleaning up together) with each person having their job is a great way of demonstrating just how effective (and delicious) teamwork can be!
Baking holiday cookies with your kids sparks their creativity. Get the sprinkles out, make different color frostings and let the fun begin! It is also good to jump onto pinterest for some great ideas as a starter point and let your littles build something from there!
Baking holiday cookies with your kids builds a bond and puts a sense of holiday tradition in the air, after all, cookies are a cherished part of everyone’s holiday season! Taking the time to bake some holiday cookies with your kids will show them that they, and this holiday, are important to you, building that sacred parent child bond while boosting their confidence. Plus, you will love how much better they taste knowing everyone had a blast making them together!

We spent most of today in the kitchen and went cookie crazy! It was messy, it was fun, it was soooo delicious!

I wanted to try some new types of cookies this year so we had a look on pinterest before we started. Here are links to the following recipes we tried:

4 Easy Recipes For Your To Bake Holiday Cookies With Your Kids

Holiday Oreo Cream Cheese Cookies by The Baking ChocolaTess. These are sooo good! Easy to make and we added some red sprinkles on top to make them just a touch more festive. This was our first time making them and we all liked them so much, they will become a new regular holiday cookie for us! Thanks The Baking ChocolaTess!! Click that link above to get the recipe!

Shortbread Cookie Bites by The Self Proclaimed Foodie (recipe here). Delicious and way easier to make than I thought! We will definitely make these again, thank you for sharing Self Proclaimed Foodie!

Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies by CincyShopper.com (recipe here). These are classic holiday cookies for my family. I tried this new recipe this year and was very pleased with it. Easy to follow and make with super scrumptious results!

Grandma’s Sour Cream Sugar Cookies by The Recipe Rebel (recipe here). We love making sugar cookies and I have to say this is a great recipe. We wanted to do cutouts so I refrigerated the dough for about 2 hours and had no trouble rolling it out, cutting it out and baking it. The kids had a blast making these and frosting them was even more fun! A great, easy recipe and one we will continue to use.

Whether you are a skilled chef, a beginner or somewhere in between like me, all of these recipes would work for you.

So grab the kids, get the ingredients and go have a holiday cookie baking party in the kitchen with your kids today!

Cheers!

Malibu Mama Loves Xx