Hi, I’m Maggie, and I panic at the sight of a mess ANYWHERE, especially the kitchen. So, when I asked my sister, Itty Bitty Bakers owner Jessica Hamby, if there
was anything I could help her with for the business and she responded, “Yes, please test this recipe for me," I panicked. My eyes immediately turned into laser beams and scanned the ingredients list. That’s when I saw it. The word I was dreading. FLOUR. But it didn’t stop there. Sugar, baking powder, eggs, and salt - was she trying to send me to an early grave?
Now, I am trying, really trying, to be one of those moms that allows my kids to create and concoct freely in the kitchen and elsewhere, so I had numerous talks with myself in preparation for this recipe. “It’s going to be fine. It’ll be fun! Sadie will LOVE this. Do it for your sister. It’s just a mess. It WILL get cleaned up. Be the mom your kids want you to be. Be the mom YOU want to be!”
Well, here I am post-recipe test, realizing like most of my anxiety-inducing endeavors, this ended up being a walk in the park. Not only was there hardly any powdery, grainy, or salmonella-causing aftermath to clean up, but it was an absolute blast to make these with my daughter. So, the lesson here is: CHILL OUT AND MAKE THE COOKIES.
Most of the ingredients you already have in your fridge or pantry, and you may already have small toy dinosaurs lying around (just hopefully not in your path to the bathroom in the middle of the night). We purchased ours from Party City, but they are available at most Dollar Trees, Dollar Generals, and Walmart.
Ingredients:
1 cup of unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup of sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
3 cups of all purpose flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
cinnamon + sugar mixture
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Add butter and sugar to a stand mixer or large mixing bowl and beat 3 minutes or until mixture is light and fluffy.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add egg and vanilla extract and mix until fully incorporated.
In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Add to the first bowl and mix until loose dough is formed.
Place the dough onto a clean surface and knead into a ball. You can use flour on the surface and your hands to keep the dough from sticking. Take a small chunk of dough and form a rough ball. Flatten it with your hand until it’s 1/4 inch thick. (Keep the edges rough-looking to resemble fossils.) Place onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and repeat until all dough is used. Be sure to place the cookies at least an inch apart.
Bake for 6-8 minutes. As soon as they come out of the oven, use your dinosaurs to make fossil imprints. Make sure to press the dinosaur down firmly but gently, and roll it around a bit to get all of the details.
Mix a little bit of cinnamon and sugar together and brush the mixture into the imprints to make them stand out. Once cookies are firm enough to move, transfer to a cooling rack.
Note: I thought we had cinnamon, but lo and behold we did not. For step 6, we mixed 1 1/4 cup of powdered sugar and 3 tablespoons of milk and added a few drops of green food coloring. We used small paintbrushes to “paint” the mixture into our dinosaur imprints.
I hope you have FUN if you try this one out!
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