Friday night and Saturday morning I made two batters that need to be chilled. I found a recipe for a chocolate snowball without shortening and made that, and I made gingerbread, since the point of the party was to get all messy with decorating.
With so many cooks processing the broth, the snowballs were rolled and baked in no time, but they had ground hazelnuts, so when two-year-old Stick, whose mother is allergic to nuts and who might be himself, arrived, he was unable to eat any of the already-baked cookies. He was a tremendous help with cutting out gingerbread, though. I pulled out a box for him to stand on so he could reach the table, and the silicon mats were perfect to protect the table from the cutters' edges. With lots of Play-doh experience behind him, Stick got the principle of cutters immediately, if not how to press one all the way through the batter or how to transfer it to the baking sheet.
When the sheets with his cookies (mostly shapes, because his reindeer tended to lose their heads and his trees to get bent) went in the oven, he folded himself on the floor in front of it to wait (you know that way little kids sit, like a capital M?). I then turned on the oven light, and that was just terrific. Soon after the first gingerbread emerged, his father brought over baby Twig and the parents switched kids, and Alex did not want to leave, even to follow the warm gingerbread home.
While gingerbread cooled, Kal made cookie candy-canes and I made snickerdoodles. These I had never made, and they were pretty good despite lacking chocolate. The candy-canes were fun to make but tastewise didn't work for me.
When it came time to decorate, the dogs (Soccer brought Maisie and Maven brought Morgan) were very happy because finally everyone was finally in one spot, at the table, instead of in the living room and the dining room and the kitchen needing constant attendance and herding. And Blake was happy because he was finally let out: he has decided that oven mitts are not just whistle-to-able but worshipable too, so he had to be imprisoned while the oven was being opened and closed and trays were hot. And Maisie was happier because Blake was out. She finds him fascinating, while older, placider Morgan ignores him.
Decorating cookies was definitely a smock event. Stick would have been a champ at this but I was just as glad he had left by now. Maybe after the breakfast nook is done, I will welcome toddlers there to use food coloring and frosting to decorate cookies. We grownups were messy enough. Lots of stained teeth and fingers and hot wet towels later, we were done.
Done decorating, anyway, but not done distressing Morgan. Because she is unsteady on her feet, she prefers rugs to slippery wooden floors. Even getting around the chair at the corner of the living room to step between it and the dining room takes careful negotiating. During cleanup, her mother and I were in the kitchen, and you could tell she would much rather have been underfoot than under the dining table. She really is the sweetest dog.
The best thing about having eight people over to make cookies is that they take most of the cookies home with them. I had all the fun of baking and decorating four batches of cookies and way less than one batch in the house to eat.