Jolly Cookie Jar

I found this recipe for layered cookie mix last year on the Williams-Sonoma website and the Minx and I had fun making jars to give to some of her friends and godparents.

This year we decided to make some for her teachers.

This is a great project to do with young kids as they can be genuinely helpful, measuring out the different ingredients and patting it down into layers.  I got the jars quite cheaply at Ikea but they were much bigger than suggested in the recipe, so we had to stuff them with coloured tissue paper. I like the decorative effect and it means the teachers end up with a bigger jar to put the cookies in afterwards.  As you’ve probably guessed the Minx chose the colour schemes for each teacher (and she had very precise ideas for each one).

 

You could use any cookie recipe for this though the one given in the link above works very well as it makes for some interesting layers  - brown sugar layered between white sugar and flour, and layers of nuts, cherries, rolled oats and chocolate chips.  Recipes for hot chocolate mix, with chocolate chips and marshmallows would also be good.

All the recipient needs to do is stir in butter, eggs and vanilla and then bake the cookies, using the recipe provided on the label.  The recipe in the book tells you exactly what to write.

Next year I’m thinking it might be quite fun to decorate the jars with glass paints.

The Williams-Sonoma recipe comes from Kids in the Holiday Kitchen.  I picked up the book this year as we’d enjoyed the cookie jar recipe so much last year. There are lots of fun projects for kids – including makes, not just baking , though I was a little perturbed by how unhealthy some of them food was– yes that is a chocolate brownie covered with buttercream and crushed candy canes you can see above. Also not all of the projects come with pictures, which is a great shame. But overall I think we’ll be using this book a lot.