Gingerbread Men

The book that we read in school this week was The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone.  It is a retelling of the traditional story:  old lady makes gingerbread boy, boy comes to life and runs off, gingerbread boy climbs on fox's back to cross river, fox tricks boy into getting his nose, fox eats boy.  The kids loved the story, and I showed them a couple of YouTube videos of the song ("Run, run as fast as you can . . .") and they loved them too.

So we decided to make our own gingerbread men.  I found a pretty simple recipe from the Food Network and baked up just four of the cute little guys.  I put the rest of the dough in the freezer to save for Christmas.  I did not make the royal icing that is given in the recipe because I was not familiar with dried egg-white powder and wasn't really interested in doing anything complicated with these cookies.  So the kids used M&Ms to decorate them and we enjoyed them after dinner last night. 

before they went into the oven

and after they came out of the oven

I was surprised at how much the kids liked gingerbread cookies.  I am not a huge fan of the flavor, but the kids loved them.  C even enjoyed licking the beater after making the dough.