Raspberry Linzer Cookies

When you’re a parent you play the lottery all the time. In the early years, there is the can-we-keep-them-from-killing-themselves lottery or the will-they-be-a-good-eater lottery. Then who could forget the parenting gamble of will-they-have-a-total-meltdown-in-the-cosmetic-aisle-of-the-grocery-store. It serves you right for thinking you could buy yourself a new lipstick while getting fruit and the cereal you’ll eat out of a bowl while standing in the kitchen. As your children age and enter school, you’ll relish the will-we-get-the-good-teacher-at-school lottery and the will-they-wind-up-with-the-right-friends crap shoot. Surprisingly, I’ve won every time at school.

Since Scarlett entered her local public school we’ve been blessed with the most dedicated, highly-experienced and loving teachers. And, coininditentally, of the two teachers she’s had in the last three years (we were lucky to repeat our latest), the teachers also happen to be long time buddies. But Mrs. Gibson and Mrs. Heath are more than just friends to each other, they’ve become important confidants in both mine and Scarlett’s life, especially since their respective children are some of Scarlett’s favourite people. Scarlett adores Mrs. Gibson’s charismatic younger son Hunter, who is a master crumble maker. She has also become fast friends with Mrs. Heath’s twin 9-year old daughters. Katie and Sarah write sweet congratulatory messages on Scarlett’s corrected tests and the girls send gifts and notes back and forth through Mrs. Heath. Katie and Sarah also happen to be baking whizzes. Fans of our cookbook, Mrs. Heath shares with us pictures of the girls cooking from their copy of How to Feed a Family and we relish their feedback on our recipes. So it was only a matter of time before we would all bake together.

We spent a recent PA day making these holiday Linzer cookies. It was so exciting for Scarlett to share her experience of working on a photo shoot with the girls, and Katie and Sarah loved collecting Ceri’s and Maya’s autographs on their book. But the best part, aside from eating those nutty and sweet Linzers, was watching the final, long embrace the threesome gave to each other at the end of the day. I swear cooking and baking with children really is about love and, of course, friendship. It a messy gamble but it’s always worth it.

Please read Katie and Sarah’s lovely post about the day which they fittingly titled “How to Feed Santa”. (Ceri – Is this our next book?) Take it away gorgeous girls….

Recently, Laura and Scarlett invited us to come and bake Christmas cookies with them. We usually help make Christmas cookies at home including gingerbread, shortbread and thimble cookies.

We arrived at the studio, and it already smelled yummy from the baking they had done that morning! We baked linzer cookies, a cookie none of us had made before. Laura had mixed the dough the night before. We laughed because we got to roll the dough out with glass water bottles because the rolling pins were left at home. While we were rolling, one of the bottles fell off the table. Fizzy water spilt everywhere. It looked as if it was raining in the studio.

It took a little work to figure out how the cutters worked so the top cookie had the shape cut out. When the cookies were baked and cooled we dipped the top one in icing sugar and put jam on the bottom one. Then we squished them together so the jam rose out of the hole.

After Maya finished taking the pictures we got to eat them! They were really good and definitely something we want to add to our Christmas baking list.

It was so neat to see the magic of the studio. We had a great time making the cookies and meeting Ceri and Maya. (We even got them to autograph our cookbook!)

Thank you for inviting us and letting us see the way you bake and photograph the food. Yum! Sarah and Katie Heath

Recipe courtesy of Real Simple.