Cookie Cutter Crazy

Pamela and I made GF/CF Gingerbread Cookies before Christmas, but she was still getting over a cold and was not really "up" for the activity. We ended up refrigerating the leftover dough and made another batch of cookies tody. We still have plenty of dough left for another batch, which I froze. My very first tip for this recipe is to cut it in half because I did not have any bowls large enough to handle the dough!

We made only one major tweak to the recipe because I could not find any amaranth flour at the health food store. We ended up replacing it with sorghum flour. The hint in the recipe about making your own insulated pans worked well and added opportunities for Pamela to reference to resolve uncertainty. She had never used a full-blown rolling pin nor cookie cutters, so baking these cookies was a great opportunity to learn new skills. My big tip for this recipe is to avoid over-baking because the recipe produces a very stiff dough.

You could say that Pamela went cookie cutter crazy. First, she tried out three-sizes of gingerbread men. Then, she tested out two kinds of stars, apples, and shamrocks. She enjoyed trying different kinds of shapes.

One mother recently asked me to recommend recipes with less than five or less ingredients to do some beginner's baking. That is hard to do when baking GF/CF food because, to get the right consistency, you must blend different kinds of flour. I think you could scaffold this by putting together all the dry ingredients in advance and then start the child off by focusing on the liquids individually and mixing them with the dry ingredients when ready. With beginners, you can scaffold by having all the utensils and ingredients out, oiling pans and preheating in advance, etc.

To work on referencing skills, you can leave the recipe out of the child's sight. This means the child will have to pay attention to you to figure out how to put the ingredients together.