More than a dozen Illinois student newspapers over the past few weeks have run feature articles highlighting favorite holiday baking recipes by students at their schools.
From Simrah Qasim, Steven Pappas, and Kara Pearson at Hinsdale Central, we get an interesting gingerbread cookie recipe and then three separate desserts involving peppermint: peppermint bark brownies, peppermint bark, and chocolate peppermint cheesecake.
That last one features, according to the authors, cheesecake that “has a crumbly graham cracker crust that acts as the base for the soft peppermint-flavored custard.” It sounds hard to resist.
Moving up north a bit, to St Edward High School in reporter Kelly Hancock doesn’t give us yet another gingerbread cookie recipe but instead describes the dessert as “versatile” in that it can be decorated to look like little men, women, houses, or even reindeer.
We also read from Kelly about sugar cookies and snickerdoodles. “A warm snickerdoodle while sitting down to watch a Christmas movie is the best,” she writes. “The cinnamon compliments the cookie to perfection.”
The St Edward article may be a little short on ingredients or directions, but the gingerbread cookie article at Lockport Township High School makes up for it over and over again.
Mara Kubis says the “perfect gingerbread cookie” simply must include the perfect decorations. “You want a smooth and perfect icing to go onto your chilled cookies,” she writes. “You are going to want lots of piping bags, piping tips and food coloring, of course! With some decorations you may want to outline the cookie then flood the inside with icing.”
Yep. “flood the inside with icing,” she said.
Of course, while cookies are mainly for baking and eating, there are many students who turn that fun into fundraising for worthy causes.
A few sixth graders in Waterloo, Ontario, baked and sold chocolate cookies, raising $1,200 for a food bank in their community, the Canadian Broadcasting Company reported.
“We wanted to help out the community, and we know that Ray of Hope does a great job in helping the less fortunate get meals and have a better life, so we decided on them,” one of the young bakers was quoted as saying.
A few other baking articles this holiday season:
- Watch the cookie ‘crumbl’ from Alex Paprocki at Downers Grove South
- Crumbl cookies: a batch made in heaven from Sophia Woods at Plainfield North
- Holiday cookies from Hannah Petersen at Crystal Lake Central
- Salted caramel chocolate chip cookies from Brianna Roskilly at West Chicago
- Top 10 holiday cookies from Sophia Rusch at Lincoln-Way West
