Little Adelaide is not yet old enough to pipe some frosting with me, but I have a pretty good idea that when she gets to that point, I won’t be ready! I’m a bit of a perfectionist, you see. Especially when it comes to baking. Making gingerbread houses with the family? Don’t team me up with little cousin Suzie….she’ll mess up my perfect frosting icicles! My sister recently introduced me to a blogger who wrote about her experience making cookies with her kids….so funny and so exactly how I’m going to be (click through for the hilarious post)! I better decorate all the cookies I can now, before Adelaide gets in the way.

Check out Baby Rabies’ post here:
My Life is Not a Rice Krispies Commercial
And, for all of you elf-on-the-shelfer’s out there….this is hilarious:
5 Highly Inappropriate Traumatizing Elf On a Shelf Ideas

So, while Addie’s still little, I baked this batch of ginger cookies sans her help (she was bopping around in the Bjorn as I made them, so I guess she kind of “helped”). My mom found this recipe online (from gimme some oven) and it’s a definite winner. The cookies turn out absolutely perfectly chewy every time. I highly recommend the combination of lemon curd with the ginger cookies. Great for the holidays!

Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies
(adapted from gimme some oven)
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups sugar (I ran out of white sugar (!), so I used dark brown sugar instead. Even more delicious!)
1/2 cup molasses
2 eggs
4 cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. cloves
1 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. crystallized ginger chips (this is my mom’s awesome addition…genius!)
extra sugar for coating cookies

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2) In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, soda, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and salt. Set aside.
3) With an electric mixer, beat together butter and sugar until combined. Add in the eggs and molasses, and beat until combined. Then slowly add in the dry ingredient mixture until combined. Fold in the ginger chips.
4) Roll the dough into small balls (about 1″ in diameter – or less). Fill a small bowl with sugar and roll each ball in the sugar until it is completely coated. Place on lined cookie sheet and bake for about 8-10 minutes. Once they are done, remove from the oven and let cool for a minute or two. Then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.