Not-Gingerbread biscuits

I made a couple of errors in preparing for our baking today:
1. I assumed we had some ground ginger
2. I let my desire to buy "fancy molasses" cloud my judgement and override the fact that, according to Google, Wikipedia and the sensible bit of my brain, it is not the same as golden syrup

Top left shows that not all our
cookie cutters produced
recognisable Christmas shapes

Still, neither of these errors detracted in any way from the enjoyment Z1 got from helping me mix or from her joy while cutting and decorating the biscuits (cookies to you, North Americans). Z2 joined in too, though I did have to tell him to stop poking quite a few times.

Z1 with her rice and sprinkles and
two of the cookies she lovingly
decorated (the one on the left
looked like a snowflake when unbaked,
the right was a gingerbread man)

It was a bit hectic trying to get dinner sorted at the same time as baking batches of biscuits and keeping an eye on the sprinkling activities. This meant that when Z1 asked if she could put some sprinkles in her rice, I just sighed and said it was fine. The coloured rice doesn't show up so well in the photo - probably 'cause she had eaten most of the food-dye-stained grains by the time she asked me to take the picture.

Downloadable from here

Of course, after the rice and sprinkles, it was time for the Zeds to try their baking. They each took one bite and discarded their respective biscuits. I like them though (the Zeds and the biscuits, just to be clear).

Credit where credit is due: My starting point for these cookies was this recipe on the BBC recipe website