Fibonacci Sugar Cookies

I had some extra cookie dough to use up, and an excellent, math themed, picture book, biography to read with the children, that was just begging for a story time snack.



With the Fibonacci's sequence, and the golden rectangle in mind, I started dividing the dough into thirds (sort of estimating the proportions of the rectangles).


I placed two thirds of the dough into a bowl, and then divided the final third into thirds again. I placed two thirds of that dough into a second bowl, and divided the final third into thirds again, continuing that way, until I had the dough divided into six portions.


I cut the smallest piece into 12, 1x1 squares (using 1/2 cm as my unit of 1), and placed two squares side by side on the cookie sheet, for each of the six cookies a half batch of dough will make (click here for the recipe).


I mixed food coloring into the rest of the dough, a different color for each bowl, and a couple of teaspoons of baker's cocoa into the largest lump of dough...


...and then continued dividing them out into squares following the Fibonacci sequence. So, the second square was 2x2 (keeping in mind that my unit of 1 was 1/2 cm, making the sides of the square 1 cm).


Then, onto a 3x3 unit square...


...and so on, and so on, forming a golden rectangle. Or rather, trying to form a golden rectangle, because I was so busy worrying about cutting the dough into the right sized squares, while still keeping them all the same thickness, and making sure I had enough dough in each bowl for all six cookies, that I didn't even notice until after the cookies were baked, that I had reversed the position of the 1s and 2s.


Not to worry though, a quick slice with a butter knife while they were hot, a dab of frosting after they cooled, and everything was right again...


...and ready for the older children to pipe melted chocolate chip, across the corners of the squares...


...to form golden spirals, an image found throughout John O'Brien's illustrations.


It's great to be a homeschooler.