Turkey Hands

Has this conversation ever happened to anyone else?

Friend -- "Hello my dearest friend in the entire world, would you like to come over to my house for Thanksgiving dinner? I'll cook amazing wonderful food and I will fill my house with people that love and adore you. And there will be gifts."

Me-- "Yes!"

Supposed Friend -- "Great! Come over at THREE -- IN THE AFTERNOON."

It sounds great on the surface. They draw you in with promises of love and food and gifts. (Probably I'm making up the gifts part.) But THEN... then they drop it on you. THREE O'CLOCK. IN THE AFTERNOON. What are you supposed to do? Do you eat lunch? I mean, we're talking Thanksgiving dinner here. You are supposed to be hungry. So that you can eat a lot. But what if you don't eat lunch, and then you get there and they expect you to just mingle for two hours?! I don't know about you all, but I'm not a nice person when I'm starving. I don't want to "mingle." I don't want to "talk" and "enjoy myself." I want to figure out a way to distract the hostess long enough so that I can snatch some of that delicious smelling food coming from that room of temptation she is calling a "kitchen." Either that, or I'm going to start gnawing on the sofa.

I'm not saying that you can't invite people over for Thanksgiving dinner and offer them gifts. By all means -- go ahead and put my name on that guest list if you like. And I'm not saying you can't ask them to come at 3pm. Just, for the sake of their sanity and your sofa, be clear about the time you will actually be eating. ESPECIALLY if there are children involved.

Or you could just make these cookies with those children. And then let them eat them. Before dinner. It's a holiday. Dessert before dinner is totally cool on holidays, right?

Start out by tracing the child's hand. On paper. And then cut it out and use it as a template to cut out your cookies. Just to be on the safe side here, I'm going to mention that skipping a step and trying to cut out the cookie around the child's actual hand is NOT okay.

Flood the cookie with white icing and let it dry for a really long time. (4-8 hours)

While you are waiting, make some eyeballs and some beaks and gobblers. (Yes, I am well aware that the red turkey thing is called a "wattle," but if "true dat" is an acceptable phrase, then I can call it a gobbler if I want to.) 

Help your child wash their hands really well. Maybe wash them twice, just to be sure.

Spread some colored icing on their cute little hands. I used thick icing for this, so it didn't run off his fingers before he could get it on the cookie. I would say, if it is thick enough to hold a peak, that's about where you want it.

Oh, and PS -- this is the point where he said to me, "You said this might be a little weirdy. And you were right. This is super weirdy, Mom."

Help them press down ever so gently on top of the cookie. Hold the cookie down while they lift their hand up.

Drop an eyeball and a beak and gobbler onto the wet icing and call it a day.

OR...you could let it all dry for an hour or so and pipe some names on....and THEN call it a day.

Georganne
Georganne

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