Gingerbread Dogs

Photo by Yasemin Tulpar

Remember gingerbread men? Well, at some point we gave up making them. Maybe it was just too hard to eat human-shaped cookies. Whatever the reason, for the past few years now, gingerbread dogs have been our tradition.

Though it's hard to eat something so cute, they're easy to make. I've been doing it so long. It's one of those seasonal markers that takes root when children are young and becomes an important family ritual of the winter season.

This year the cookies were needed a bit early, to illustrate an article that is coming out in the Christmas issue of West Coast Editor.

So there I was, late at night as usual, rolling out the dough and decorating the doggies with shiny sugar beads as eyes and collars. This touch of early Christmas filled the house with seasonal warmth and infused the dreams of my sleeping family with the fragrance of cinnamon.