Fall inspired pumpkin cookies

Since Anabelle loves baking, I thought it would be fun to make some fall-inspired pumpkin cookies together. She loves to help tossing the flour in the bowls and mixing it all up.

After we got the dough made, I let her throw some flour on the counter and punch out the pumpkin shapes. I rolled out the dough and she threw several more handfuls on top and cut out mini pumpkins. Each time she cut out a pumpkin and laid it out on the cookie sheet, she would yell, "Yeah!! Mo' mo'" and wouldn't stop pleading for more dough until we moved onto the next batch. She had so much fun with the dough!

The icing, not so much. 

I let the dough sit in the fridge overnight, and we made the icing the next day. She really loves the monster rocks we made, and wanted to bring them down to decorate the cookies with us. Since my baking skills are sub par, I colored the royal icing a pinkish orange color and the first batch of cookies looked like they were pumpkins picked a little too early. 

She only played with the icing for a few minutes before she wanted to get down since she left her baby doll unattended. While she played with daddy, I practiced my coloring mixing skills and made the cookies look like real pumpkins made by a toddler. I've never worked with royal icing before, since piping is terrifying to me, so I won't tell you these were the last five cookies in the batch. I won't tell you that it took me three tries to get the orange the right shade and two tries for the green.

I won't tell you that these cookies tasted like cardboard, or that no one in the family liked them.

At least they look pretty, right? Kinda. 

Now I have royal icing cemented on my counter top and cupboard, flour and sugar in crevices I didn't know existed and on the floors. The best part of this baking fail, is when I asked Anabelle if she liked baking with mommy, she screamed. "yeah!" My cup runneth over.
Happy Friday friends!