Thursday, February 18, 2010

Cute as a Button

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a big Neil Gaiman fan. I love his books, his movies, I subscribe to his blog RSS, follow him on Twitter, heck – I even bought The Graveyard Book because he said he wanted pie! Soooo, yeah, big fan.

Another person I follow is Bakerella. She does amazing baking projects and I swoon every time I go to her blog. I’m still planning on making cake pops but with everything else going on I barely have time to COOK let alone bake these amazing pops. Soon, I promise.

You’re probably wondering what these two people have to do with each other, and I swear there is a reason, but first a little backstory: Kate’s daycare is doing a whole week of different themed events and Thursday’s event involves treats. Each kid has to bring in treats for the whole class that doesn’t have peanuts included. Kate originally wanted to bring goldfish crackers but another little boy was already set to bring those so we needed a different plan.

Now, this is one of my first school-related activities ever. I always wanted to be one of those parents who gave their kids something creative to bring to the class but, let’s face it, this might be one of the only times where my kids actually bring in something homemade and not from the store the morning the treats are due. I have a lot of ambition but my creative juices pretty much stop the second I get home from work. On a rare occasion I will stay up to 11pm to finish a project but the last time that happened was when I made owls for the Jet City Tattoo Expo three weeks ago!


Anyhoo, I was trying to figure out what I was going to make for Kate’s daycare party as I was readying Bakerella’s website yesterday. Looking at every post, adoring the recipes and photos, I came across an article about Coraline cookies. WHAT??? Bakerella found an easy way to make cookies referencing the movie Coraline?? I’M THERE! It was perfect! It was cute little cookies in the shape of buttons that were pressed down after they came out of the oven and then punched with a straw to make the holes. I mean really, can it GET any simpler? Kate was so excited about the cookies that she had to put on the Coraline movie to get into the spirit. It was an all out Coraline partay in the house last night.

I had to change a few steps because Bakerella’s recipe called for peanut butter cookies, and because the daycare can’t have any peanuts, I switched to sugar cookies. I also didn’t have a lot of time to spend so I just used the sugar cookie dough from the store. I didn’t dip them in chocolate (ummm HELLO! THAT’S THE BEST PART!) I figured the cookies were sweet enough but if I make them again I will follow Bakerella’s recipe exactly and use chocolate.

The roll of sugar cookies made approximately 45 cookies (there was enough for about one more but we ate the dough) and it made me realize that the servings per container amount on the back of the roll was actually correct for once. I mean, never in my lifetime of baking cookies have I ever gotten the amount of cookies that the recipe is SUPPOSED to make. Score another one for me!

So, overall, this was (finally!) a great cookie experience. Kate got what she needed for daycare AND she gets to tell everyone that the cookies are from Coraline, and I finally found a cute, simple project to try as my very first recipe from Bakerella. And Neil Gaiman was a part of it. Yep, great way to end the day.

Sorry for the bad pics, Lucky's camera was stolen and until I can afford to get him a good new one he's using mine.  These are from the camera on my phone.

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