Cooking with Kids: Melting Snowman Cookies

My girls spend a lot of time in the kitchen with me.  We have a kid-friendly cooking project happening at least 4-5 times each week.  We have all seen Melting Snowman Cookies for years and everyone seems to create them with their own personal touches.  My youngest daughter made these cookies and decorated them herself a couple of years ago.  We'll be making more of these cookies a little later this holiday season and I will try to add some updated photos this year!  These cookies are very easy to make--and offer the kids a great opportunity to be creative and have fun in the kitchen.  How do we make Melting Snowman Cookies?
 

Ingredients for our Melting Snowman Cookies
1 Dozen Sugar Cookies (Store Bought, Made from a Mix or Homemade from a favorite recipe)
12 Large Marshmallows
White Cookie Icing for Decorating
Colored Frosting for Decorating
12 Hershey Kisses
Holiday Jimmies, Sprinkles, Star Shaped Sprinkles & Sugar Pearls

Instructions for making Melting Snowman Cookies

Create "Puddles" with White Frosting.  Add a little milk if your frosting is too thick.  Thinner frosting drizzles and behaves a little more like "melting" snow on the decorated cookies.  This is a fun task for the kids because the "melted" icing is supposed to look a little messy and imperfect.  No lines to stay in for these sugar cookies!

Add the Marshmallows.  Spread a little frosting onto the bottom of each marshmallow and stick a marshmallow toward the top edge of each frosted cookie.  Add more frosting around the base of the marshmallow to ensure that it sticks to the cookie and stays upright.  My daughter opted to frost colored scarves onto the snowmen.

Decorate the Snowmen Cookies.  Using candies, sprinkles and frosting--decorate the snowmen cookies as desired.

Add a Santa Hat.  Turn a Hershey Kiss upside down, add a bit of frosting to its flat bottom and attache it to the marshmallow top.  Color the Santa hat with frosting and add a sugar pearl or a star to the top of the Kiss.

Enjoy! 

Some Tips for Making these Cookies with Kids
Store Bought Decorator Cookie Icing is easy for the kids to use and less messy than making your own.

We decorate all of the pieces while they are attached to the cookies.  Some people decorate the face separately and then attach it--but, we find that little hands tend to wreck those pretty decorations while attaching the marshmallows!   

Let the snowmen be imperfect.  Some parents have a really tough time stepping back and letting the kids decorate.  This is a project that the kids can really do by themselves.  The results may not look professionally decorated....and they shouldn't.  This is a great project to teach the kids how to decorate--but, let them take control artistically.