If you want to please cookie-loving kids, leave the biscotti and tea cakes on the shelf. Those dry, sophisticated adult treats just don’t make the grade with kids who adore ooey-gooey chewy cookies just like your mom used to make–if you were lucky. The cookies that kids love include those with practically foolproof recipes so they can pitch in with the mixing, scooping and rolling–because the only thing better than fresh-baked cookies is fresh-baked cookies that they helped to bake.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate chip cookies are a perennial kid favorite–a fact that has not escaped Nabisco and Keebler. Good Housekeeping magazine’s Chocolate Chip Jumbos recipe ups the ante on the packaged cookies–and most homemade chocolate chip cookies–by packing in double the chocolate chips and a whole pound of butter for the moistest, gooiest chocolate chip cookies ever. Your kids will love scooping out the dough for these cookies with–wait for it–an ice cream scoop. The recipe is online at Good Housekeeping.
Oatmeal Cookies
Barack Obama may have won the 2008 presidential election, but Cindy McCain won the election year First Ladies’ Cookie Bakeoff sponsored by Parents and Family Circle magazines. The recipe, shared with Cindy McCain by a family friend, kicked up a little controversy–turns out it may have been originally published by Hershey’s. Whatever the origin, the combination of rich butterscotch chips and chewy-sweet oatmeal cookie makes these oatmeal cookies a sure-fire kids favorite. You can find the recipe online at Recipezaar.
Butter Cookies
If there’s anything kids like better than eating cookies, it’s helping mom make cookies. That’s why so many families treasure the ritual of making holiday butter cookies together. Land O’ Lakes Best Ever Butter Cookies have everything that makes a great holiday butter cookie–the kids can help mix them up, roll them out, cut them out with cookie cutters and decorate them with sugar sprinkles or frosting. Best of all, the melt-in-your-mouth goodness keeps well, so you can dole them out at snack time for weeks. You’ll find the recipe on Land O’ Lakes butter boxes, or get it online at the Land O’ Lakes website.
Rice Krispie Treats
Three ingredients, two pans and 10 minutes prep time–can it get any simpler? Purists may make the argument that Kellogg’s Rice Krispie Treats aren’t technically cookies, but your kids will be too busy enjoying them to care. Chewy, crunchy, sweet and gooey, they combine everything that kids love in a cookie. If you’re cooking for a gluten-free diet, make them with a gluten-free rice cereal, or check out the recipe at the Ptit Chef website.
Photo Credit
- cookies image by Nini from Fotolia.com
