Cookie Baking Marathon

Fitting in everything around everyone's schedules, we designated Tuesday as cookie baking day.

I had the sugar cookie dough chillin' in the refrigerator and the gingerbread dough ready to go when Jill and the kids arrived a little after 10:00 this morning. 

First up - gingerbread cookies. The cookie cutters were sorted because some are for gingerbread and some are for the lemon sugar cookies. There are rules that must be followed. Tradition! Then I roll out the dough in batches and Jill, Irene and Isaac fit all the cutters on, getting them as close together as possible. 

Once those are baked and cooling, we moved on to the sugar cookies, which are decorated with colored sprinkles before baking. 

 By the time we got all of those done it was time for lunch, and then the kids went upstairs to do some secret work in the gift wrapping center.

After lunch Jill took off to go to an appointment and the rest of us made fattigmann, a fried cardamom-flavored Norwegian cookie. 

It takes some muscle to roll out the very springy dough and  get it very thin. 

Irene's nimble fingers were very good at tucking the ends of the bows through the slits. 

Isaac manned the dutch oven full of hot oil. 

Tom helped supervise and did a lot of washing up. 

After the fattigmann cooled the last step was to plunge them into powdered sugar. 

We just got that cleaned up when Jill returned and it was time to decorate the gingerbread with royal icing. 

Jill and the kids went home a little after 4:00. Tom and I rested and I finally got to read the newspaper.

Then we went out to dinner. 

It was a very successful cookie day.