Hairy Fingers

I've been busy preparing for our annual pumpkin carving party and producing the prerequisite cookies. Sunday we baked our ginger breads and on Tuesday we iced 200+ of them by hand (note to self: decorating a pumpkin cookie is much faster than decorating a gingerbread skeleton). Last night was spent on the "witches fingers" shortbread cookies.

Magda loves helping in the kitchen and thoroughly enjoy spending time baking with her. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of time spent in the kitchen with my mom, so I'm more than happy to pass it on. And she's become quite helpful and had a good time decorating gingerbreads with K., and it's easy to forget that she's just four.

So last night she was helping me prepare the dough, cutting up the butter, putting other ingredients in the mixing bowl and adjusting the mixer speed (and, of course, "checking" to make sure stuff tasted OK).

For our party I double the cookie recipes and I wanted some diversity. So while Magda was at the Kitchen Aid watching the butter getting beaten, I turned around to get the unsweetened cocoa from the pantry (I'm a firm believer that there are few, if any, recipes that can't be improved with some chocolate flavor). A few seconds later I heard Magda yelling for help.

When I turned around, I saw her standing on her step stool, yelling and looking down at Rose who was vigorously licking her feet. It took me a second to realize that she wasn't just "looking down" but rather that she was forced in that position because her hair had gotten caught by the mixer and she was trying desperately to stay away from the machine.

I jumped to it and managed to stop the beater with my hand and then turn the mixer off. There was too much hair wound around the shaft to take the beater off and I shortly considered scissors before figuring out that I could simply wind the beater back by hand and free Magda that way.

So with lots of tears and butter in her hair, Mada was finally freed from the infernal machine. Jennifer had the pleasant task of trying to get all the butter out of her tender hair in the bath tub, but it all eventually worked out.

I stayed in the kitchen and finished the cookie dough, with my heart racing from all the adrenalin, though I think I managed to appear fairly calm throughout the whole ordeal (IMO, nothing freaks a kid out more than a freaked out parent).

The cookies turned out great--the brown cookies tasting better than the white ones. But if you happen to come across a hair while eating a witch's finger cookie, you'll know which little witch it came from...