My son's teacher asked me to make cookies for their holiday party Friday. I had planned to do some nice decorated cookies but with getting over a cold, limited time and motivation, I haven't done anything. My grandma just asked me to take her out tomorrow so there goes my day. Any ideas of what I could do quickly for a bunch of 4 year olds? The teachers know I have a small biz so I can't bring myself to buy something. That's the only thing about baking for a living, people have very high expectations. Plus, maybe this would be an opportunity for the other parents to see/taste my work too. Maybe I should just stay up all night and bake huh? Those dec cookies are so time consuming... HELP ME!!

I use a recipe similar to the no fail recipe, but it doesn't need to chill, so it is faster.

Here it is:
1 cup butter or margarine
1 cup of sugar
1 egg
3 cups of flour

Cream together the butter and sugar, add the egg, mix in flour one cup at a time, adding the last by hand. Roll out on floured surface, cut with cookie cutters, and bake at 350 degrees until lightly browned around the edges.

To decorate quickly, I make royal icing per the wilton recipe, and then thin it down a little. I dip the cookie surface into the icing, then smooth it with a butter knife (using the flat edge to "scrape" the cookie. This dries VERY quickly. I then go back with full strength royal, and pipe decorations. Again, they dry really fast.
I decorated 6 dozen christmas trees like this last week in a little less than an hour.
HTH!

Make some cup cakes let the teacher know that you were sick . I thing cup cake are faster and easier to make kids always enjoy them.

Better yet.... bake cookies, take some colored BC in and let the kids go at it with their own cookies! I've been doing that for some of the "motherless" teachers at school (my girls' teachers are kind of funny about parent volunteers in the class) and it's been a blast. They just use popsicle sticks to spread theit frosting and use sprinkles..... they love it!

How about dipping some large marshmallows--one in white chocolate and one in dark chocolate. Spread a little extra dark chocolate on wax paper to make brim of hat and place dark chocolate marshmallow on it. Let set then attach hat to white chocolate marshmallow. Decorate with snowman face.

I actually used to do that with my preschool class. Can't believe I forgot about that.
It wasn't as messy as you might think it is. One thing I did was give them each a bowl (small disposable one) with a little icing in it, and one popsicle stick for their own use. It was important to give them each their own, because they liked to lick the popsicle stick.
You might be suprised at how well they do.
If you really wanted to get off easy, instead of making cookies, buy enough ice cream cones for everyone to have one, make the green icing, let them frost the trees with that, then attach m&m's for ornaments, other candies for other decorations, and coconut for snow. My class always loved doing that as well.
One more tip, we kept a few wet wipes at each place for them to wipe their hands off periodically.
have fun!

Just a thought--will the teacher have time for kids to "decorate" cookies? How about buying refrigerated sugar cookie dough at the supermarket/grocery store & decorate them to show your talent. Of course, they won't taste quite as good as a scratch recipe, but when you're sick & have family responsibilities what else can you do? At least the parents will get to see your handiwork!

Oh, yeah, "just happen" to have pictures of your work "in the car"!!!!!

Have a happy holiday & hope you feel better!

Thanks everyone for your suggestions! I started baking but if I don't have time to decorate I will see if they can decorate their own. Great ideas guys!

I wish I was in elementary school again...great idea's guys...


I like the ice cream cones and making a tree they can decorate..