Tis The Season for Cookies and Memories

By Adriana Lewin, Founder

Did you know that December 4th is National Cookie Day?!

I don’t know about you, but cookies and brownies are my favorite food. So naturally, I am excited about this day.

Now what does this have to do with childhood cancer, you might be asking?

While some people will be going to delicious cookie places like Tiff’s Treats or my new favorite Crumbl Cookies, I will be baking cookies and decorating them!

Last weekend I ventured into learning how to bake sugar cookies….from scratch…..with the attempt to make them fancy….

Look, I don’t like cooking and I avoid baking because I have no shame (and clearly no self control) and will eat an entire pan of brownies and cookies in less than 24 hours. Yikes! So I don’t tempt myself with keeping those things around. BUT this year, I wanted to get into the holiday season and explore holiday traditions our family could enjoy, so I decided I would attempt to make some sugar cookies with the fancy frosting on top.

I texted my baking friend and said “Hey, when do you use the cookie cutter on sugar cookies? Before or after the cookies are baked.” And that’s when she saved me by kindly letting me know that the sugar cookies I was attempting to bake had to be a special “rolled sugar cookie” recipe so that the shape I cut out with the cookie cutter would actually keep shape when baked and not melt into a giant blob like I had once done.

The activity was such a blast. A little chaotic, but I instantly thought of my friends in the childhood cancer world. This would be a perfect activity to do as a family while you play holiday music or watch Christmas themed music (or any music). I used this fabulous cookie recipe from All Recipe (Click here for the recipe) and enlisted the help of my three kids (7 years old and under) to help mix, roll, cut and decorate.

It was a day long endeavor, but my goodness, it was such an amazing time we shared. The kids absolutely loved using a pin roller and sprinkling flour as though it was real life play-doh. And while the cookies cooled off, the kids helped me make homemade Royal Icing and chose the colors to use on our cookies. Once the cookies were cool enough to decorate, we had fun being wild and crazy with our decorating. One of my children even threw in some Halloween themed cookies, because why not?!

I know as a childhood cancer family, it is incredibly to get into the spirit of the season sometimes, especially when grief, depression and anxiety are present and overwhelming. Trauma stunts our ability to get creative and playful, so if this sounds like a fantastic bonding experience for your family, here are the recipes! We are gifting these cookies to our friends because I already ate a million of them.

I wanted to share the recipes that we used and will be doing again for National Cookie Day!

You have to cut out the shapes because these aren’t the type of cookies you roll in a ball and they “melt” into nice rounded cookies. We bought Christmas Sprinkles and added it to the Royal icing as soon as it came out of the piping bag. Sprinkles won’t stick if you wait very long.

Also, this recipe says it bakes 60 cookies. We burnt almost two dozen while I learned my oven’s “sweet spot”. This will definitely become a family tradition. That’s how much I loved this activity.

Cookie Recipe:

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/10402/the-best-rolled-sugar-cookies/

Royal Icing Recipe

https://houseofnasheats.com/easy-royal-icing-recipe-for-sugar-cookies/

May this be a beautiful bonding activity for your family that gets everyone’s minds off cancer and into the spirit of being together - creating memories for a lifetime!

Adriana Lewin, M.A., LPC is the founder of Family ChemoTherapy, a Licensed Professional Counselor, and mom to a Warrior survivor and Super Sibs! Make sure to follow her at @family_chemotherapy @the_adriana_lewin.

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