Panda Cookies

After seeing the panda bread featured here, at Perfect Pandas (thanks to the Scribbit blog for linking it), the kids wanted to try out a cookie version. I've absolutely got to remember to stop letting them read over my shoulder when I'm on the computer. But I have to admit, this time I was just about as gung-ho to give it a try as they were.

We mixed up three batches of sugar cookie dough, one double batch of plain, and one chocolate flavored batch. Then we separated out part of the plain batch, and added some blue food coloring to it. We picked blue to suggest a sky color behind our bears' heads. However, I think next time, I'll color some black, for the panda, and make use of the chocolate batch for a background color. After all, pandas really should be black and white, not brown and white - but I didn't think of that until the cookies were in the oven.

We started by making a fat, play dough type, rope out of some of the white dough. We rolled it out on wax paper to help keep the mess down.

We added two thinner ropes of chocolate on top, for panda eyes, filling in the gap between them with more of the plain dough.

Then, we wrapped the entire thing in rolled out plain dough. This required a little bit of flour on top of the wax paper, and seriously increased the mess factor.

Next, came two more ropes of chocolate dough, for the ears. We made them a little larger than the ropes for the eyes, though they could have been a little larger yet.

This time, we separated the chocolate dough with a rope of blue colored dough.

Then, we wrapped the whole thing in blue dough.

We wrapped the entire roll of dough to a fresh sheet of wax paper, sprayed lightly with a non-stick cooking spray, and popped it into the refrigerator for an hour, to harden.

Then, we sliced off 1/2'' cookie pieces, and baked them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, for about 10 minutes.

We had a few that turned out a little smudgey, but they were eaten pretty quickly, leaving behind a nice plate of passable panda faces. Which, were actually, also eaten quickly.

I read, recently, in Scientific American, that a study has found video game playing to be good for brain development. Now, if they'd just announce, that feeding children unusually large doses of sugar is good for their health, I could win mother of the year!

It's great to be a homeschooler.