Gingerbread Men

Over the weekend I did absolutely nothing but cook/bake/prepare treats for Christmas happies. I wanted to make some easy snacks for my special education students to give their homeroom teachers. Those homeroom teachers deserve way more than some homemade candy, but I thought it would be a nice little treat to get them through the day. My SpEd kids have to go to homeroom class with a RegEd teacher 20% of the day. A few of my kiddos are known for giving the RegEd teachers a hard time, so they needed to do something to make them happy at least one day out of the year.

Pretzel Hugs

· Circle or square shaped pretzels

· Hershey’s Kisses Hugs

· M & Ms

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Line the baking sheet with parchment paper. Spread out a layer of pretzels on the baking sheet. Place an unwrapped Hugs on top of the pretzel. Bake for 4 minutes. Remove from oven and promptly place an M&M on top of the Hug (to squish it down).

Let them cool completely and ENJOY!

I made a few more little things, and then it was time to make the “big daddy” of all the projects….. The Gingerbread Man. Jill passed along this recipe to me, and she made it sounds SO easy. Of course, her and Ford whipped it up like it was no problem at all. Me, on the other hand, will never make one of these things again. The recipe wasn’t that hard. It was just a mess to make and very time consuming. After the mess was made and my time was spent, I got the gingerbread men out of the oven. After they had cooled I tried to get them out of the pans….. They turned into a big crumbly mess. The good news is that icing is a great for gluing things.

Before the "glue" was added.

Taaaa Daaaa! Thank goodness for icing.

I invited Easten and his Mama and Daddy over to decorate the little fellas with us. Since I had to ice the men to keep them intact all the babies would have to do is make them pretty. They had a ball. They ate all the stuff that was supposed to go on the men, fought over sprinkles, broke the legs off the men (which wouldn’t have been tough to do), and destroyed my kitchen. All the time I spent making the crumbly men was well worth it. I think we had more fun watching the babies than anything. After they had finished their creations we bathed them and let them play some more. It was a very fun night.

Didn't Take E long to break the glued together legs! All Suzy wanted to do was eat her candy, and all E wanted to do was play with it.

Ahhhhh. Sugar sprinkles! Yaaaay.

The final products. My kitchen hasn't been the same since.

They definitely needed baths. We will use this picture at their rehearsal dinner.

The Hershey Kisses didn’t agree with Suzy when it became bedtime. She was up until about ten o’clock. She is usually dead asleep by 7:30-7:45, you know, so she will NOT eat chocolate that close to bedtime ever again.