Teaching The Faith

Here is a fun idea for the kids, from Catholic Culture, which also has many resources for the family church and spiritual growth.

Apostle Cookies

Make cookies honoring an individual apostles or all at one time.

Any good gingerbread cookie dough will do, and any good gingerbread-boy cookie cutter will make a gingerbread Apostle (or you may cut them freehand with a knife). The twist is in the decoration. We decorated each one with his own symbols, tied a ribbon through a hole pierced (before baking) in the top of each cookie, served them on a tray, covered, with only the ribbons showing; you got your dessert by choosing a ribbon, finding the cookie, and identifying it. This is an excellent way to learn all the Apostles.

The frosting is a confectioner's sugar recipe tinted with vegetable colors. The symbols may be made with stiff frosting squirted through a squeegee, if you have one, or may be cut from foil, paper, or made of any materials that suggest themselves. Here are suggestions for cookie decorating.

St. Peter (June 29)
Red frosting because he was a martyr. Symbols: two keys, a cock crowing, an upside-down cross, a fish, a sword. The keys remind us that Jesus gave him the Keys of the Kingdom; the cock recalls his denial of Our Lord; the cross tells that he is supposed to have been martyred head down; the fish — he was a fisher of men; the sword tells of his temper on the night he cut off Malchus' ear. Our Peter cut a silver-foil fish for this cookie and stuck it in the frosting. You could do the keys and sword of foil also, with the cross of melted chocolate. The cock can be drawn or cut from a picture, cut out and stuck on. St. Peter is the patron of locksmiths and cobblers.Read more...