Cookie Puzzle

What You Need:

• Pencil
• Large bowl
• Large sheet of paper
• Sugar cookie dough
• Rolling pin
• Frosting
• Gel icing
• Paintbrushes
• Sprinkles or tinted sugar
• Cookie cutters

What You Do:

1. Have your child turn the large bowl upside down and trace it on a piece of large paper, so he has a perfect circle drawn.
2. Now he can sketch the holiday scene he wants to see in the snow globe. If you’re using cookie cutters, see what kind of objects you can create with the shapes you have. Good examples include triangles for trees, gingerbread men and wild animals.
3. Now it’s time to head to the kitchen and prepare a favorite sugar cookie recipe. Make sure the recipe yields fairly dry cookie dough—if using a drop cookie recipe, you’ll need to add additional flour.
4. Your child can now flour a work surface and a rolling pin and roll out the dough to about ¼” thick.
5. Flour the rim of the large bowl, turn it upside down and press it into the sheet of dough. You can remove excess dough from around the bowl to make more cookies later.
6. Now your child can use cookie cutters to mark the puzzle pieces he wants to use for the snow globe. Flour the cookie cutters and then press them into the globe to make an indentation. Don’t remove the shapes from the dough—they will make up the pieces of the puzzle.
7. Bake the cookie according to the directions on the recipe, then remove it from the oven and let it cool completely.
8. Slide the cookie onto a flat surface, and press the cookies cutters into their corresponding shapes again, so the puzzle pieces will come out easily when the cookie is ready to serve.
9. Let your child decorate the cookie to his heart’s content! He can squeeze colored icing around each shape, fill them in by spreading icing around with a paintbrush and sprinkle sugar and other candies on it to create a beautiful snow globe.

The best way to serve this cookie is to ask guests if they can spot the puzzle pieces, and lift them out of the snow globe!