Yesterday I allowed my son to have a last minute play date with one of his friends from school. Since the play date fell on a school night, I decided to let them bake holiday cookies instead of playing with video games. I decided on the activity of baking cookies because they could apply their math skills to a fun project, but I quickly realized my idea of what a finished cookie should look like and theirs were two different things.

The boys did not want my hands on help, but I was still in the kitchen to supervise. They wanted to feel like men and do everything themselves. I helped assemble the measuring cup and cracked the egg for them, and gave them red sprinkles to put on the cookies. The ingredients on the back gave the choice of either using butter or margarine, so I had the boys use margarine because I found out that using either margarine or shortening makes sugar cookies extremely soft.

They assembled the ingredients and mixed them together using my hand held mixer. Instead of using their hands to shape the cookies, I suggested they use a cookie scoop for better accuracy for exact size and shaping, and just like boys they completely ignored my advice and created crazy looking shapes that were uneven and disproportioned. I had to turn my head a few times to keep my son from seeing me laugh.

When all the cookies were on the baking sheet, my son and his friend applied to red sprinkles on top and then I put the baking in the oven and baked the cookies for about 10 to 15 minutes because the shape of the cookies were different sizes which required more baking time.

After the cookies finished baking they were several different sizes as I had predicted, but they tasted great. The margarine softened the cookies to the point where they were melting in my mouth. Even the following day the cookies were still soft even though we did not properly secure them in an air tight container.
I liked the Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix because it was the opposite of those nasty sugar cookies sold in stores with royal icing or frosting decorations. The store purchased sugar cookies are usually dry and lack flavor, but the Betty Crocker sugar cookies were soft and full of flavor, and they were easy to make. I am pretty sure that if my son and his friend had taken my advice they could have had at least one dozen cookies, but they ended up with eight spaceships covered in red sprinkles. Even though my son�s cookies were crazy looking, he had fun making them and that is all that mattered.

If you are looking for a great sugar mix then I would recommend going to Walmart and buying a few bags of Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix. It does not take a lot to make the cookies, and they taste a lot better than store bought sugar cookies. You can eat them plain or decorate them, and they are a good idea if you have a baking party for kids. You can also roll out the dough to make cutouts which is what I am planning to do for Thanksgiving, and I was also going to use them to make ice cream sandwiches.