365 Penguin Cookies

No, I didn't really make 365 Penguin cookies. I made 8.

And yes, I know their are 7 in the picture, but I made 8 to go along with our story time last night.

365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental and Joelle Jolivet, the story of a family who, beginning on January 1st, receive one penguin a day, for an entire year, from their environmentalist, nut of an uncle (every family should have one of those), is one of our favorite New Year's stories.

We'll have to wait until later today to enjoy it though, as our story snack time had to be postponed, after one of the children managed to make dinner last until bedtime. So, I'll share the cookies with you first.

Using sugar cookie dough, some dyed orange, and some with cocoa added...

...cut circles from the chocolate dough.

Then, remove a heart shape from the middle of the chocolate circles.

Fill it with plain dough.

Squish the circles into tall ovals (if you don't, they end up looking more like owls).

Use the orange dough, to form beaks, and feet by hand, play dough style.

Add chocolate chip eyes. I just had an epiphany, too. The eyes should go higher, on the chocolate (you could put a little white dough under them), then the down sweep of the heart, would be the beak, and they would look even more like penguins!

And, bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, for 12 minutes. One small batch of sugar cookie dough will make a dozen penguins. Now that Christmas is over, I'm back to only baking as many cookies as we need for the moment, and freezing the rest of the dough, for later in the week. So, as I said, I made 8.

It's great to be a homeschooler.