Christmas baking: cookie recipes, tips and tricks for baking with children

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Apart from the Advent calendar (and St. Nicholas Day) Baking cookies together with mom and dad was always a highlight in the run-up to Christmas. Making the baked works of art was almost a little more fun than actually eating them.

And today we have children of our own and are continuing this beautiful Christmas tradition with our kids. To make Christmas baking in your kitchen as stress-free as possible, we have collected the best tips, tricks and cookie recipes for baking with children for you.

Baking cookies with children: This is how it works without stress

When baking cookies with children, it's not just about the taste of the pastry that matters - the look also has to impress the little ones. So that the young bakers don't lose their interest in baking cookies right away, you should start with as much as possiblewith just a few ingredients.

Seven tips for baking cookies with children

1. No time pressure:To avoid stress, it's best to take an afternoon off for the baking day. Or even easier: choose a weekend to bake cookies with your children.

2. Select cookie recipe:Make a pre-selection of simple cookie recipes and let your children make the final decision. Alternatively, you can choose a basic cookie dough that can be modified in portions with lemon juice, cocoa, peanut butter or chopped nuts.

Important:To reduce the risk of stomach ache when snacking on dough, you should choose a recipe without baking powder, yeast and eggs.

3. Order is everything:Clear the table. To prevent the cookies from sticking to the tabletop later, you should cover them with an oilcloth tablecloth(here on Amazon)* or line with cling film. When baking cookies with children, wear old clothes or an apron. Provide everything you need for baking: weighed ingredients, cookie cutters, baking sheet, mixer.

4. Distribute tasks:Feel free to involve your children in the dough preparation (and also in the shopping) by giving them age-appropriate tasks. From the age of four, children can break eggs and add ingredients; at primary school age, they can already use the hand mixer under observation.

5. Dough for everyone:If you have several children who want to help bake cookies, give each child their own portion of dough that they can roll out (more or less) independently. Mini rolling pins are practical for children. There arehere on Amazon* even with embossed Christmas motifs.

6. Simple Shapes:The more delicate the cookie cutter, the easier it is for the cookie to break. Older children are more experienced at cutting out things, so they are welcome to do it tooUnicorn cookiesbe. For younger baking helpers, simple cookie shapes such as hearts, Christmas trees or stars are more suitable.

Important:Explain to your children that for safety reasons you will take care of baking the cookies in the hot oven yourself. When lifting the cut-out cookies onto the baking tray, you should also assist the little ones with a flat scraper or cake server.

7. Keep Patience:Stay calm if your children take longer than expected to bake cookies. Perfectionism also has no place here. Enjoy your free time with the children. Conversely, the little ones also have to exercise a little patience when baking cookies, for example when the cookies are in the oven or need some time to cool down before decorating the cookies.

General tips foryou can read about it here.

3 cookie recipes for children with guaranteed success

Now we don't want to torture you any longer: Here are three brilliantly simple cookie recipes that you can easily bake with your children. Each of these child-friendly cookie ideas has its own advantages - and will definitely impress not only the kids in terms of appearance and taste, but also mom and dad.

Sustainable Christmas present:How about homemade cookies?? Suitable forSimply pack the cookies in beautifully decorated sandwich bags.

1. Cookie cutter

The classic when baking cookies with children are simple butter cookies that are cut out with fun shapes and decorated with tons of colorful sugar sprinkles, edible glitter, icing and sugar writing. We chose a simple vanilla cookie recipe without eggs.

Tipp:If you like it healthier, you can use chopped nuts, almonds or pistachios to decorate the cookies.

You need these ingredients:
For the dough

For icing and decoration

This is how the preparation works:
1. Knead all the ingredients for the dough thoroughly - preferably by hand, it's a lot of fun for children and without eggs the mess is kept to a minimum.

2. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees top/bottom heat and line a baking tray with baking paper.

3. Sprinkle the work surface with a little flour. Roll out the dough 0.5 cm thin. You can start cutting out cookies straight away - the “sharp” thin side of the metal molds faces downwards.

4. Spread the cookies on the tray with a little space between them and bake in the oven for a good 8 - 10 minutes until they turn slightly brown on the edges.

5. Place the finished cookies on a kitchen rack and let them cool. In the meantime, mix icing sugar and water or lemon juice into a thick icing. If desired, divide the icing among cups and stir in a few drops of liquid food coloring in each.

6. Brush the cooled cookies with the (colored) icing using kitchen brushes or the back of a spoon. Add decorative beads and sugar sprinkles on top while the icing is still wet.

Also read:

2. Gingerbread man

If you are organizing a baking day with your children, their friends and neighborhood children, you can, for example, have the rascals decorate a few cute gingerbread men. Here it makes sense to bake the gingerbread men beforehand and then give the little ones a free hand in decorating.

You need these ingredients:
For the dough

  • 250 g honey (liquid)
  • 100 g brown cane sugar
  • 1 No
  • 125 g Butter
  • 500 g Flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 packet of gingerbread spice
  • 2 tablespoons baking cocoa

For decoration

  • 200g powdered sugar
  • 1 fresh egg white
  • a splash of lemon juice
  • colorful sugar writing
  • Sweets to decorate (sugar pearls, nuts, gummy bears)

Besides that

This is how you bake gingerbread men with your children:
1. Heat butter, sugar and honey in a saucepan until butter and sugar are melted. Then remove the honey mixture from the heat and let it cool down.

2. Meanwhile, mix the dry dough ingredients in a bowl. Beat in the egg and mix. Finally, mix in the cooled honey mixture. Wrap dough in foil and place in the refrigerator for 2 hours or overnight.

3. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees top/bottom heat. Line a baking tray with baking paper and lightly flour the work surface. Then roll out the dough to a thickness of 0.5 cm.

4. Cut out cookie dough using the gingerbread man shapes and place on the tray. Bake the dough for 10 to 15 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool on a rack.

5. For the royal icing, beat the egg whites until stiff and gradually add the powdered sugar. If the icing is not liquid enough, add a little more lemon juice. Color the icing with food coloring as desired and fill it into a piping bag. Your children can now use it to paint a face on the gingerbread man and decorate it with the sugar decorations.

3. Smartie Cookies

Hand on heart: You're not the biggest baking fan yourself, but baking cookies with the kids has to be easy at Christmas? Then try these quick Christmas cookies without cutting out and having to decorate.

You need these ingredients:

  • 130 g soft butter
  • 50g brown sugar
  • 50g white sugar
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • 1 No
  • 1 TL Vanilleextrakt
  • 250 g Flour
  • 120 g colored chocolate buttons (Smarties or M&Ms)

This is how you bake the cookies:
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees top/bottom heat and line a baking tray with baking paper.

2. Mix all the ingredients for the dough. Finally, fold in two thirds of the chocolate beans. Form small balls from 1-2 tablespoons of dough and place them on the tray about 2 cm apart. Carefully flatten the balls and press the remaining Smarties lightly into the top of the dough.

3. Bake cookies for 10 to 12 minutes until the edges begin to brown. Let the cookies cool briefly on a kitchen rack and enjoy them while they are still warm with a glass of milk.

Tipp:For a salty chocolate note, you can add 2 tablespoons of peanut butter and 2 tablespoons of baking cocoa to the dough and sprinkle some coarse sea salt on the cookies before baking.