Christmas Cookies!

The last two weekends have been a busy time in the Steinke kitchen. It's a good thing we have little helpers (and step stools).

Last weekend, Gretchen and the kids got the batter ready for her Christmas cutout cookies.

I mostly just took pictures for the blog.

And the kids were mostly just in it for the beaters. So they weren't nearly as helpful as they looked.

This morning, we got back to work. The kids were chief in charge of unwrapping the Hershey Kisses.

They were pretty stoked.

I was chief in charge of rolling cookie balls for our peanut butter Kiss cookies. But mom kept complaining about my work.

She said my balls were too big and were throwing off her peanut-butter-to-chocolate ratio. I said, bigger balls got the job done faster.

So I was banned from working on the snowball cookies.

But I didn't let her busting me about my balls stop me from working on our newest cookies ...

...campfire s'mores cookies. That's right, I found a way to make s'mores during the wintertime.

All it involved was smashing graham crackers to a fine powder, mixing together a bunch of other less-important ingredients, cutting some marshmallows in half and dropping in a Hershey Kiss. And boom! Campfire s'mores cookies.

They're as good as they look. (Get excited co-workers.)

When those were done, it was time to frost and decorate the cutout cookies. (I skipped the part where we made them. Don't worry, it was terribly exciting.)

The kids were pretty heavy on the sprinkles.

You could almost see the frosting when they were done with them.

Luckily, we didn't have as many to do as we usually do.