Cooking with Kids

MotherHen, at Ship Full of Pirates, has started a weekly link on cooking with children.  I'll try to get the cute little button on my sidebar in the near future.  T.Lynn was just itching for Friday to get here so she could participate.  With a little help, she has made us a batch of Vanilla Wafer cookies today, partially in preparation for the banana pudding I want to make later, and partially because we just love these cookies.  We went on ahead a did a double batch, but I'll put the regular size recipe at the bottom of the post.
So, without further ado, here she is:

Mixing together the dry ingredients.

Adding sugar to the butter.

Carefully adding an obscene amount of vanilla

(but that is what makes these sooo good!) to

the creamed mixture.

Every child's favorite task - cracking eggs.

It's never too early to teach them, that if you get

your eggs from a farm, you need to check those

little buggers, BEFORE you add them to a recipe.

Scraping down the sides of the bowl.

Adding the dry ingredients.

Guarding us from the flour trying to escape from

the bowl - probably because we were making

such a big batch.

The all important "Does this one taste good raw?"

test.  And it does, if the quantity of dough she

was caught sneaking is any indication.

Piping the cookies out on the sheet pan.  This

really is an easy way to get small, reasonably

uniform cookies.

Ready to go in the oven.  We did try out some

on this pan using our small cookie scoop, but

the cookies were a bit too large.

All done!  The lighter colored cookies were the

ones we used the scoop on.  They were a little too

thick, so they didn't get as crisp.

These cookies are great in banana pudding; that is REAL banana pudding -  don't you dare use boxed vanilla pudding mix - and using banana flavored pudding mix is just criminal!! 

Vanilla Wafer Cookies:

1/2c. soft butter (no substitutes!)

1c. sugar

1 egg

1Tbls. vanilla

1 & 1/3c. all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

Combine dry ingredients and set aside.  Cream together butter and sugar, then beat in the vanilla and the eggs.  Add the dry ingredients and mix well.  Put in a piping bag and pipe out small cookies.  I didn't even put a tip in mine, I just used the coupler.  You can scoop them out with a teaspoon if you want.  Bake for about 12-14 min., or until they are begining to turn brown around the edges.

No, these aren't the healthiest thing on the planet, but at least you can pronounce all the ingredients in them, and they make your house smell heavenly while they are baking!

Becky