This is a recipe I love to make with the kindergarten kids at work. I don’t need a full kitchen, just an outlet and a waffle iron (or two) and the kids are kept busy rolling ball after ball. Baking them all takes a bit of time, but I don’t mind sacrificing a whole morning to waffle cookies. We always make a huge batch, so every kid can fill the iron twice, and the bigger ones can remove them with a wooden fork.

The dough balls can be dunked into sprinkles before they hit the waffle iron, but I found that most of “my” kids prefer them plain. Just make sure you have a non-stick iron for the sugar sprinkles.

The dough is very similar to that of spritz cookies, the kind you force through the cookie attachment of the meat grinder. It’s too tough for a piping bag or a cookie press. The resulting cookies aren’t tough at all though. They turn out tender and crumbly, perfect for kids to make a bit of a mess.

Of course, you can drizzle the baked cookies with a bit of melted chocolate if you want to go fancy, but I find them best just as they are.

For about 100 kiddie palm sized cookies you need:

• 1.000g all purpose flour
• 4 large eggs
• 400g soft butter
• 300g sugar
• 2 sachets vanilla sugar (about 2 Tbsp)
• 2 tsp baking powder

Knead everything together until you have a very stiff dough. Wrap it and chill it for about 2 hours in the fridge. The butter needs to harden just a bit, so it’s easier to roll the balls.

Scoop dough portions with a teaspoon, then roll balls between your hands. It doesn’t have to be exact. We always end up with different sized cookies. You can bake once you have enough balls to fill the iron, one in every compartment / heart of the iron.

Bake per your irons instructions until the cookies are golden brown. In the iron above it takes about 3 minutes per batch.

Let the cookies cool on a rack and enjoy them with a cup of hot cocoa.