Sunday, July 24, 2016

We had our five-year-old granddaughter, Tangeni, for a sleep-over this weekend.  She arrived Saturday morning, fully equipped with several gifts from her birthday a couple weeks ago - a teepee to be set up in the living room; a large yellow winking smiley-face pillow; three dolls - two mermaids and one princess; a very large watermelon; a really large nightlight with fish swimming in a beautiful underwater world (I'd like one of those myself!); a toy tyrannosaurus and a wooley mammoth that made the most awful noise; but no tablet. Oh, yes, I forgot the bubble wand and squirt gun.  Armed and ready for action.

Woody (our cat and Tangeni's "best friend,") immediately investigated the teepee and found it quite comfortable.  None of the other things got much play except the bubble wand, but after a few big bubbles broke on and near Woody, he decided to ignore that game and then Tangeni lost interest, too.  What held her interest was making jello for lunch (we had to speed up the process by putting it in the freezer), and making molasses cookies for dessert for supper - frosted with "rainbow frosting."  We mixed and measured together, and waited impatiently for the dough to "chill" in the refrigerator before rolling and cutting.  Tangeni wanted to sniff each spice before it went in, and tasted a tiny bit of molasses, which surprisingly she didn't like.  Well, not a big surprise - I didn't like molasses when I was a child, either, but I thought her sweet tooth would love it.  The rolling and cutting went very well - she got the hang of keeping the dough and roller well dusted with flour, and joyfully announced that we'd "made a LOT of cookies!" when they were all in pans ready to bake. She was patient about letting them cool before frosting them, and while Grandpa did dishes, we frosted some of the cookies.

Without food coloring, I could only produce pink and green using the juice from a couple jars of red and green cherries I happened to have in the fridge and got a sort of mauve color using grape jelly.  If you've ever mixed pink and green and purple, you know you get  "mud."  I'm not sure molasses cookies really need frosting (but then, I'm not five years old with a sweet tooth), so I made only a little of each color - enough to do about 10 cookies.  However, the result was worth the effort.  It didn't matter that my rainbow colors collapsed into gray-brown puddles as she enthusiastically slathered the pink, green and light purple daubs over each cookie.  I told her I was sorry I couldn't make prettier frosting, and she cheerfully reassured me with, "That's ok, Grandma - it TASTES GREAT!"
Actually, Grandpa agreed.  I may have to frost a few more for him since Tangeni took the three that were left home with her, of course.

A fun sleep over, and we won't mention to mom and dad that two frosted molasses cookies were "breakfast."
  
 

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