Making friends isn't always easy. You watch and play with kids on the playground and try to decide who might be a fun friend. If it all goes well, you might decide to set up a playdate. You might be nervous, but don't worry. You can only control yourself, and wait and see if you and your new friend are a good fit.
Once you start playing together, you need to communicate, and when something doesn't go the way you want it to go, you need to say what your plan is.
But I have something here that might help you. I recently met a great new friend, and I brought these cookies to our first playdate.
My friend knew right away that I had chosen a special shape and beautiful color so that he would know that my mama and I love him and his parents. After all, that's what friendship is all about: love.
Here's my recipe that I created with my mama. As always, it's vegan. Feel free to use and share it, but if you publish it, please link to this post or give me credit. I'd like more people to find me so they can enjoy my beautiful recipes.
Kaya's Friendship Gingerbread Hearts
Ingredients:
1 cup plant-based butter of your choice
1 1/2 cups granulated or golden sugar
1/2 cup dark molasses
1/2 cup plant-milk of your choice
4 1/2 cups flour (gluten-free flour is fine)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teeny tiny pinch kala namak (aka black salt)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
Kaya's Easy Peasy Cookie Icing (optional):
Ingredients:
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1/3 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 Tablespoons water (fun tip: 1/3 Tablespoon is the same as 1 teaspoon!!)
1 teeny tiny pinch salt
Food coloring of choice
Using a whisk, mix above ingredients together. It should be thick but drizzle from a fork. Kind of like molasses. You can add sugar or water to adjust the texture as needed. This should be the perfect amount for drizzling one batch of cookies.
Please note: mama and I have strong preferences for who we buy spices from and which plant-butter and plant-milk we use, but we haven't asked the companies if it's okay to name them, so if you want to know our preferences, please email us.
Directions:
Cream together butter and sugar. This means mash it up with a fork for a while and then get your grownup to stir it really really fast, or get your grownup to beat it for 2-3 minutes on low speed with a hand mixer.
Add molasses and plant milk, and stir until uniform. This means you need to stir it up until it looks smooth and all the same. Except don't worry if it looks kind of curdled. This happens sometimes, and it comes out tasting just as beautiful and looking just as fabulous.
Sift your dry ingredients on top of the brownish glop you just made. It comes out best if you sift them in the order I listed above.
Stir it together until it makes a stiff dough. Ask your grownup to take turns if you get tired. This is the hardest part. Don't overstir once it looks evenly mixed, or your cookies will be stretchy and bready in a not-so-delicious way.
It's fine to refrigerate the dough for a couple of hours if you want. That makes it easier to handle. We don't always want to be patient, so we put a lot of flour all over the dough and the counter and the cookie cutters and our hands, and we're really really careful when we put the cookies on the sheet.
Roll the dough out to between 1/2 and 1/4 inch thick. We like to roll it out on parchment paper and dip our cookie cutters in flour between each use, but you do you!
Cut out shapes using cookie cutters, and carefully transfer them to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper (or not lined at all is fine, too, especially if you used lots of flour to keep your dough from sticking to everything). Remember, it's nice to choose shapes that will say something important to your new friend.
Bake for about 8 minutes, until they puff up and little cracks start forming all over the surface. This will get you cookies with crispy edges and chewy middles. For completely crunchy cookies, add another 2-3 minutes. Also, if you used really big or really little cookie cutters, you might have to adjust the baking time.
Cool them completely. This part is hard too.
Drizzle the icing onto the cookies by dipping a fork in the icing and slowly zooming the fork over the cookies like a very slow airplane or a lazy bird, back and forth. Go past the edges of the cookies on both sides and make a mess--I promise it will look prettier that way! It shouldn't be perfect. It looks more lovely when it's unique. We also like to sprinkle coarse sugar or cute sprinkles on top. Especially if you have a color that looks nice with your icing.
This recipe makes about 50-75 cookies, depending on the size of your cookie cutters. It keeps in the fridge really well if you wrap it in parchment paper and then in foil or plastic wrap. We love keeping a log of dough in the fridge and making just one or two cookies at a time when we're in the mood.
Have fun and happy baking and friend-making!