Last lesson before Christmas

My remit - as the school baking lady/parent volunteer baker - is to choose easy, fun, fast recipes, so that the kids don't lose interest part-way through and so that we have enough time to complete all the tasks in the allocated lesson time.  I had thought that this lesson's recipe (for simple, roll-out sugar cookies) fit that bill, but as John Steinbeck so aptly wrote many years ago, 'the best laid plans of mice and men aft gang awry'  (it's a good few years since I studied this book in high-school English Lit class, so if that quote isn't verbatim, then let's call it a paraphrase).

Here we can see the instruction board that the teacher made - not too many ingredients (top left), tasks (right hand side) or length of recipe (lower left) - right?

This recipe required a hand-mixer, so the teacher kindly brought in her vintage Kenwood number - some of the children had never seen nor used one, so it caused much merriment.

Everyone wanted a turn!

You won't be surprised to learn that the resultant dough was rather sticky, probably from being overworked.  So we just spread out more flour before rolling out the dough and stamping out the fluted circle shapes (I'm telling you the actual shape of cookie, because when you look further down you may not recognise those shapes as circles, bless them (we didn't have a spatula with which to lift up the cookies onto the tray))

Here we see a couple of the children rolling out the last possible bits of dough in order to stamp out just one more cookie!!

And the final tally - 3 trays of roll-out sugar cookies, counted just as the bell was ringing for the end of the period.  The school is gearing up for the St Andrews Day (November 30th) performance and then the Christmas Show so we won't have time for any more lessons this year.  Here's hoping they want me back next term/next year.  Happy Holidays kids!