My mom, aunt and I used to make home-made, yummy, yeast-y donuts on Christmas Eve. As family arrived in the evening, we were literally taking these out of the fryer, drizzlying with thin icing and everyone was eating warm fresh donuts.

Well, over the years, that tradition did go by the way-side, but as my daughter and my brothers' boys were old enough, my sister started baking Christmas cut out cookies with them each year. Roll, cut out, bake and then she let the kids icing them.

Now, while things have changed, I started this back again with my sister's little girls and my daughter's step-son, plus friends. The first year we had 3 more boys, what was then my future grandson (age 2), and 2 nieces (age 2 and 1); 6 kids total. I made the dough the night before and rolled it out on wax paper, then layered these on a cookie sheet and put it all in the frig. The kids wouldn't have to wait on us to get going.  The next year we had purchased a box of sugar cookie dough that had 5 packets inside, we made them all. This box was great, since it meant I didn't have to mix individual ingredients. Just add an egg, melted butter and a bit of milk.  I didn't make the dough and roll it the night before, we were going to start later in the day.  TIP 1: Make the dough the night before or at least several hours and let it cool in the frig.  Cool dough is not "sticky" and will cut MUCH easier! The second year, that room temp dough stuck to cookie cutters, fingers, plates, and anything else.  The cool dough was much better!

I was ready. I had enough cookie cutters to go around. TIP 2: Have enough cookie cutters so kids don't have to wait to "share" the 1 snowman cutter you have. I learned quickly that, especially with younger kids, it's better if they can easily tell which edge goes up. Traditional metal cookie cutters may only have a small edge that is folded over; I found kids really struggled with which end cuts. And if you do that upside down, you get smashed dough....TIP 3: buy cookie cutters with either a plastic liner on the top or those with a ledge you can use to push into the dough.

TIP 4: For whatever reason, kids have a difficult time sharing plates with flour to dip the cutters in; give each kid a saucer with some flour on it. When they shared, flour was sliding all over, or they were leaning forward, tipping the plate, getting their shirt in the dough. Save yourself the headache.

My sister has this sugar cookie process, where you take your rolled dough and very lightly lay out cookie cutters across it, turning them so you get the most cookies you can out of that dough. Well, works great if you are adults, but the kids we just not that patient. Each cookie was cut and put on the cookie sheet individually. TIP 5: Kids generally will cut a cookie one at a time, at least if they are under 5 or 6 years old.

TIP 6: Have lots of cookie sheets and a place ready for hot cookies to cool. I had moms bring their cookie sheets so we had several; with this many kids we needed to keep assembly going as much as possible. If they have to "wait" for stages, they get messy and hyper (sugar, anyone?).

TIP 7: Plan this in 2 stages: cut and bake, then decorate. The first year, we tried to keep the assembly line going. First, they got tired, then confused, and then it became a bit less "fun" as we tried to finish. After that, I planned it a bit different. Cut and bake, then break and eat lunch, or watch a movie, then come back and decorate. Yes, the day is a bit longer, but I really found that they were "fresh" for the icing stage.

You know, with little ones, you can spend almost as much time re-rolling dough as you do cutting it, particularly because you are not cutting several at once.  If the kids wanted, we let them roll their own dough back out---probably not the best idea, but there is always 1 or 2 that really want to do that. So I have a box that holds my cookie cutters and small rolling pins. Generally, I found older boys get into rolling the dough, and so do the little ones.  My 3 year old niece "rolled" her pile of dough while the other kids cut theirs 3 or 4 times.  She just kept putting a little flour on top of the pile and the rolling pin rolled over it, but it never got thinner.  Eventually, I told her we needed to finish getting hers baked and she let me help roll.  If this happens, try to mix the now over floured dough with other scraps; it will be easier.  When we finally got down to a small hunk of dough, we whispered and ate little pieces of raw sugary dough.  She thought that secret was great fun.

Since I've never had less than 4 kids, the idea of hauling out a bunch of lunch stuff or cooking more in the middle of this doesn't appeal to me. One year, someone ran and picked up fast food and that was fairly quick and easy. Another time we did work all the way through, making a long afternoon, and the kids were grumpier, along with us adults! This year, we ordered pizza delivery, which had a definite benefit! You'll hear more about this later.

It took me a couple of years, but we did discover a very helpful list of things to do:

IDEA 1: Re-load cooled, clean cookie sheets with a single layer of cookies, maybe 8 or so on a tray, depending on the size. Each child gets his/her cookies on a cookie sheet.

IDEA 2: Sprinkles and toppings only "stick" on wet icing so only icing a few at a time. We tried to icing an entire cookie sheet then hand them off if they wanted to add just colored icing or sprinkles, but if your icing gets a hard, cooled shell, everything will just roll off.

IDEA 3: If you leave your sprinkles in those shaker tops, you'll end up with "piles" of sugar/nonpariels/whatever. Those things are only made for grown-ups I guess and maybe not all of us! They will dump those in 1 spot. We found out this year that if we put these in small bowls or saucers, kids could reach in, get "pinches" and be pretty accurate on where they put what and I didn't end up with 2 inches of green sugar on a poor Christmas Bell!

Personally, I don't like the gel icing on these cookies if you have to pack them up.  The gel doesn't ever set up, staying sticky.  Like I said, if you are making these at your house, they will work out fine; the colors are really pretty.  But if kids are packing their cookies up to take them back home, the gel is messy.  And, with little ones, skip it; it's just too much trouble.

 Kids of course want to take their own decorated cookies home.  If their Mom brought a couple of cookie sheets, you can load a layer of cookies on those.  Put the cookie sheet in the bottom of a box and it's pretty easy to get these home.  But if they have very long to drive, or you made lots of cookies, it's difficult to layer these.  Remember the pizza?

Pizza boxes are perfect for a single layer of decorated cookies.  Drop the lid back on and you're ready to go!  It's pretty easy to carry these level and drive them home sitting on a car seat.