Bake Up Some Cookies For Family Fun

Summary: There's lots of reasons parents are baking with their kids these days. Baking with children is a great way to spend time with them and to teach them things at the same time you're all having fun.

There's lots of reasons parents are baking with their kids these days. The delicious result is of course on the list. But more importantly, baking with children is a great way to spend time with them and to teach them things at the same time you're all having fun. Baking cookies with any or all of your children is a naturally fun activity. Cookies are portable, sweet and fun to make. They can be made in stages if time is tight-prepare the dough in the evening and bake them the next morning. Older children can read the recipe and direct adults on what steps to take. Small children can roll the dough into balls and flatten it with a fork, similar to making peanut butter cookies. There's enough fun to go around for everyone. What makes your cookies even better is to add corn starch to the dough. In fact, many recipes for baked goods from the early 20th century used corn starch in conjunction with flour. Bakers found very early on that corn starch gave biscuits, muffins, cakes, shortcakes, pie crusts and most notably cookies a finer texture and more tender crumb when compared to recipes using flour alone. Recipe books produced then by the experts at Argo and Kingsford's Corn Starch bear this out. In fact, Argo, established in 1892, has offered their customers cookie recipes since its very early years. Here's a recipe for Lemon Shortbread Cookies that's simple and delicious and should make for a batch of family fun. Lemon Shortbread Cookies 11/3 cups Argo or Kingsford's Corn Starch 2 cups butter or margarine 2/3 cup powdered sugar 1 teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 2 cups all-purpose flour Makes six dozen Preheat the oven to 350