Serendipity 13. Part II. Inventing Christmas Cookies with Tigist

So, the rest of the world may be sick of my stories of Christmas cookies, but this year I am squeezing every moment I can out of the season's baking spree.  Now that I'm in Tacoma with my sister and brother in law Katrinka and Brian, and three year old niece, Tigist, we're getting ready for another Wigilia celebration tonight.  But yesterday (and this morning) was Cookie Time, and Tigist proved yet again that she is going to take after her aunt in some big ways.  Besides being left-handed, she is a born baker, just like Auntie Trish.  And she got into the spirit of the season by adding her twist to one of the cookies that I invented in Burlington this year.  Tigist is almost as big a fan of my friend Siham as I am (she even named one of dolls after her), and so it was probably predictable that she'd pick Siham Surprises as the cookies to which she needed to add her own signature addition.    Here they are below:

Peanut butter blossoms and Siham Surprises Tigist's way -- she insisted that they had to be purple and pink.

Tigist is the do-it-yourself phase of her childhood, and so she was pretty insistent in soloing a lot of different parts of the operation -- from unwrapping hershey kisses (pretty easy) to cutting out Lemon Driskies (a little tougher, but she caught on quickly) to icing Chris Crinkles all by herself (definitely the messiest of the operations).

Unwrapping hershey kisses -- easy parcheesi, Auntie Trish!

Submitting to an extremely brief Chris Crinkle frosting tutorial before insisting on going it alone

Frosting Tig-style: lots on the cookies, and plenty of snacking of it along the way

Rolling and cutting out Lemon Driskies -- We both roll but only Tig can cut them out

After a solid morning's work rolling, decorating and baking (and eating lots of frosting in between) Tig went down for a nap and the grown-ups need to turn their attention to Wigilia prep.  Time to make some Ushkas, and tomorrow, will do another post on Wigiila in Tacoma.