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Do you bake with your kids? You should, it is loads of fun and educational too! Try this recipe, it is easy, yummy and great for cutout and decorating!

I’ll be sharing some holiday traditions we have from now onwards. One, and a favourite of mine, is to bake cookies. We call it “soetkoekies”, translated as sweet cookies. It is a very basic recipe and can be adapted by adding chocolate chips, nuts, cinnamon, custard powder etc. Get he printable recipe card at the end of the post!

We do bake cookies during the year as well, but this time of the year we do specific shapes, like these stars we did today. This batch will probably not see the holidays(we only did a small batch), but we will do another big batch in time for us leaving on holiday the 14th.

Now, when the kids join in, a lot of accidental learning takes place: measuring out the ingredients(mathematical skills), mixing, rolling, pressing shapes(fine motor skills), language skills when you talk about what you are doing etc.

We also had a chance to talk about the different size stars we made because we used the set that has 5 different sizes.

Lella helped decorate it too! We kept it very simple, but she loved it!

The end result:

Here is the RECIPE:

Ingredients

– 5 cups of flour

– 5 teaspoons of baking powder

– 3 eggs

– 250g butter

– 1 1/2 cups of sugar

– pinch of salt

Method:

– Beat the eggs and sugar

– Add the dry ingredients

– Add the butter

– Mix well

– Roll out and bake at 180’C for about 25minutes or until golden brown

–
Decorate as desired when cooled down

Easy, but delicious!

Enjoy!

Yield: 2 dozen

Soetkoekies/Cookies

Yummy traditional South African cookie recipe to decorate with icing sugar, melted chocolate or enjoy plain!

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes

Additional Time 15 minutes

Total Time 1 hour

Ingredients

5 cups Plain Flour
5 teaspoons Baking Powder
3 eggs
250g Butter
1 1/2 cups Sugar
Pinch of Salt
Pinch of Nutmeg/Cinnamon

Instructions

Beat the eggs and sugar until creamy.
Add the dry ingredients.
Add the butter and mix well until it is a manageable dough.
Roll out the dough, then use cookie cutters to make shapes.
TIP: if you live in hot and humid weather, place the dough in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes before use.
Bake cookies at 180'C for 25 minutes or until brown.
Decorate as you wish.