Sugar cookie recipes are a perfect way to involve a toddler in the kitchen. There’s rolling, frosting, and decorating, not to mention tasting! Because sugar cookies involve multiple steps, a recipe can easily fill a snowed-in morning together, as Veronika and I made it do today!

For the cookies, we used this recipe except (whoops!) accidentally added 1 cup Earth Balance butter instead of 3/4 cup. Luckily, the dough still worked great. If your toddler wants to help with some of the easier steps of making the dough, be sure to let him or her! Veronika wasn’t interested though until I pulled the chilled dough from the fridge and set it down, along with a rolling pin and cookie cutters.

She loved helping roll out the dough with the purple rolling pin!

I helped her press our heart cookie cutters in hard enough to push all the way through the dough, and showed her how to arrange our hearts on cookie sheets. She was so proud and delighted with all these steps! When there were only a few dough scraps left, I let her continue the play solo while I baked the cookie batches.

Once the cookies cooled, it was time to decorate! We nixed homemade icing and instead just tinted a can of store-bought vanilla frosting pink with a little food coloring. Veronika was so proud standing at the counter, just like big brother Travis can! She helped frost the cookies…

…and loved using a spoon to add little white sprinkles.

Of course all of this was combined with lots of nibbling and taste-testing, making for a happy sugar-fueled morning.