 Hey guys, welcome back to our channel. My name is Andrea with Food and Mentory Adventures in Food and I am here today with a bake and taste from Aldi. I recently purchased two cookie kits from there and decided I'd like to do a video to show you guys how the cookies turned out. So the first kit is this mini trees shortbread cookie kit and it comes with the cookie mix. It comes with sprinkles. It comes with a super cute little mini Christmas tree cutter and then you need to add a stick of butter and this kit was 2.99 and they also had a sugar cookie kit as well. That was 2.99 and then I picked up this ugly sweater sugar cookie kit and this one was for 49 and it comes with two pastry bags. It comes with the cookie cutter. It comes with the cookie mix. It comes with a green and red dye and then it comes with a bunch of little sprinkles that are super cute little candy canes and as you can see right here to the cookie mix you need to add one egg. You're going to need some butter for the cookie mix and also for the red and green icing. So I'm going to start out making the mini shortbread cookies first, the mini tree shortbread cookies because you have to chill the dough for 20 to 30 minutes. So if you want to see how these cookies turn out stay tuned. So I have my stick of butter in the bowl and I did think I forgot to mention that all of my ingredients are at room temperature. So my butter is at room temperature and softened and my egg is also at room temperature. But the instruction for the mini trees says to mix the butter and the baking mix together. It doesn't indicate if you should mix it by hand or by mixer. I'm going to start off trying to mix it by hand if it's too stiff. I'm going to use my hand mixer. But what I did notice when I was reading the instructions is that it never actually mentions the sprinkles. Nothing about the sprinkles on here. So on the picture it looks like the sprinkles are in the batter or the cookie dough and then sometimes it looks like they're kind of sprinkled on top. So what I'm going to do is mix my butter in my cookie mix together and then I'm just going to add in the sprinkles. So let's give this a try. So it's kind of coarse and crumbly. Let me try to get in there with my fingers and see if it kind of holds together a little bit better. Yeah, so I think you're gonna have to get in there with your fingers because it's a it's a very crumbly shortbread dough. So I'm just gonna add in my sprinkles here. I'm just gonna try to give it a good mix and this is very very crumbly. Very crumbly. So now what I'm gonna do the instructions say to roll this into a ball and to wrap it in plastic wrap and then let it chill in the refrigerator for 20 to 30 minutes. Alright guys, so I did my very best at getting this into a ball. It is extremely crumbly and it's probably about the size of a baseball, I guess I would say. So I'm gonna wrap this up with some plastic wrap and throw it in the fridge and then I will come back and we will start the other cookie dough. Okay, so next we're gonna start on the ugly sweaters and in my bowl, I've got my egg, which again is at room temperature and then I am going to use a half a stick of butter. The other half sticks are for the icing. Soop, half a stick of butter. And then the cookie mix and I am just going to use my mixer to mix it up. So here is the mix and it also is very crumbly, but I'm assuming that the egg is going to work as a binder and help hold things together. This dough, it says does not require any refrigeration, but it says that if you notice that it's starting to get sticky as you're rolling out everything to put it in the fridge. Excuse me. So let's see if this sticks together and it does. Alright, so I am going to get my baking mat ready and I will be right back. So I have my baking mat set up and right here I have some powdered sugar to keep the dough from getting sticky. I know a lot of people use flour, but I don't like my cookies to taste flowery and so I just use a little bit of powdered sugar instead. And I've got my rolling pin right here and this dough is pretty sticky. So I'm just going to sprinkle a little bit of powdered sugar on top and on the baking mat. And I'm going to start rolling and it says that this this mix makes about eight to ten cookies. So we'll see depending on how thick you make your cookies. Let me see how this works. All right, guys. So I was only able to get six ugly sweaters and this is how much dough I have left, which isn't enough for anything. So I'm just going to bake this by itself as just a regular cookie and the package says to bake these for about, I'm looking here, 10 to 13 minutes. But it says the thicker the cookie, the longer it will take to bake. So I'm thinking these might take about 15 minutes. I'm not sure, but I'm going to stick these in the oven. And then while these are baking, I'm going to work on the icing. Now, I did misread these directions. I was actually supposed to mix the butter by itself and then add in the powdered sugar. But as you can see, I have my powdered sugar and butter in here at the same time. So I am going to mix each of these separately. And then I'm going to add in the red, red food dye and the green food dye. And then you're supposed to add in a tablespoon of milk at the very end to make it creamy. So let's go ahead and get started. All right. So my sweater cookies are out of the oven and they're cooling while they're cooling. I am going back to the mini trees and I took the dough out of the fridge. And it was hard when I took it out of the fridge. So I've been letting it sit here for about five minutes and trying to work at it a little bit so I can roll it out. I've got my baking mat sprinkled with a little bit of powdered sugar. I'm going to sprinkle some on top. This dough is really very crumbly, not very easy to work with. So let's try to roll it out. And here is a little bitty cookie cutter. It is teensy, tiny, and this is supposed to make 48 cookies this box. So this is what it looks like. It's teeny, tiny. Oh my goodness. All right, guys. So I apologize because I thought I had my baking pan in the shot and I realized that I didn't. But all I was doing, of course, was just putting these little cookies on there. And they are so teeny, tiny. How long am I supposed to bake these things? They say 11 to 14 minutes. But I think that might be too long because these are probably like half an inch big. They are small. So I'm going to start them at six minutes and then go back and check them and add more time if I need to. But I'm going to pop these into my oven at 350 degrees. So here are the cookies. I let them cool completely on the baking sheet. You'll notice that a couple of my little sweaters broke. And that is because the instructions said to lightly grease your baking sheet. And I didn't believe it because I never greased my baking sheet because I have a nonstick pan when I bake cookies. But this this recipe, you actually really do need to grease your baking sheet because they broke. Also, another thing is that you'll see that my little sleeves are very close. If you want them to be separate, like in the picture, you're going to need to raise them up a little bit higher because they tend to spread when they bake. So Howard and I actually tried one of the cookies. It's just OK. Nothing special. Nothing special. It was just OK. But we are going to decorate the sweaters now. Just a couple of them so that you'll see. But I mean, there's nothing special. It just tastes like a regular sugar sugar cookie. I would say it's probably not as good as Pillsbury. So we have some icing here that Howard put in the piping bag. So right there. And then all the different sprinkles that came in the kit. So we got these two and then we also have these two as well. So the instructions say to not try to pipe it out of the bag to decorate, they say to put a dime size amount on the cookie and then spread it with a knife or something like that. But we'll see how this goes. We're not decorators, but we're just going to have fun with it. Here are our cookies. That was fun. As you can see, we're not artists. Actually, Howard doesn't look pretty bad. It doesn't look bad at all, really. All right. So I think the little mini Christmas trees are ready. So let me go pull those from the oven and I will be right back. So here are the little mini trees. And remember before I thought 11 to 14 minutes was too long because these cookies were too tiny. I ended up baking them for 12 minutes. So this is what they look like. And this is just, of course, half the batch. The other half of the cookie dough is in the refrigerator. But Howard and I tasted these and I think this one tastes better. Could be because it has the little bits of sugar pieces in there. And the one we tasted the other cookie did not have the decorations on it. So I think that those little sugar morsels make it taste better. And I just think it just tastes like a better cookie dough. To me, the little sweaters tasted kind of like a cheap cookie. I mean, I can't think of a better way to say it. And these tasted a lot more rich and these actually tasted more homemade to me than the other cookies. But but yeah, so that's it. I hope you guys enjoyed this cooking video. If you did, please make sure to give us a thumbs up. If you have not subscribed to our channel, we certainly love to have you. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you guys next time.