Jul 25, 2009

Giant cookies and Cookie pizzas.

We've been making more desserts here. Too many in fact to be able to eat ourselves. Gonna have to have a party :)

After the bunny cakes "cooking" last weekend (we nommed it all on Tuesday when five other kids came over to help us) my four year old requested that we make "the most hunormous cookie in the whole earth". Budgetary constraints, logistical issues and sanity prevented us from doing this, but we were able to make the biggest cookie my kids had ever encountered and that would have to do.

I mixed up the dough while we had freinds over, but we got caught up in other fun and never found the time to make the cookies together, so I packed up a set of dough with a tray each for our freinds to take home and we made our cookies later that day.

It's just regular, nothing special, sugar cookie dough with some different food colourings in it. The kids picked bits off and squished it into the tins until they had a multicoloured psycadelic cookie dough circle, then I gave them some wooden stamps to smoosh into it.

We baked them at 375 degrees farenheit for about 12 minutes and they came out prtty evenly cooked. I was worried that the outside would burn before the middle had cooked fully, but they came out fine and when cooled, they popped out of the trays really easily. The stamped shapes don't really show up, partly because they cooked out and partly because the kids squashed them whilst flattening out the cookies before even going in the oven. Hey ho.

Decrations with icing (just water and powdered sugar for dribbly drippy icing) and some sprinkles. It seemed a shame to cover the multicoloured cookies with icing, but the kids really enjoyed dripping it on.

Having done this and still having some cookie dough left, I washed out the pans and the next day we set about making some cookie pizzas. We made cardboard pizzas ages ago, but ones made of cookie have to beat that right? Cookie pizzas are not a novel concept, there are plenty about on the web. Many glorious varieties! Yum!

The kids squished more dough into the pans again and we baked them, then when they came out and were still warm, we tamped down the center to make it look a bit like a pizza base with a raised crust.

My first thought for tomato sauce was to use jam, but the only jam we had left was purple, so we used cream cheese icing with red food colouring instead.
The melted cheese was just water and powdered sugar mixed with a little yellow food colouring to make it look all melty when it was drizzled on.

If you do this, don't even momentarily entertain the notion that the kids might refrain from eating the icing while they are putting it on. I mean I couldn't resist tasting a bit either. I would have maybe used shredded coconut with yellow food colouring if my kids didn't both utterly hate coconut. Shame.

The toppings were quite fun to do. I cut circles out of a few fruit leathers for them to put on as peperoni and I coloured a handful of kettle corn from the farmer's market with brown food colouring to use as Italian sausage.
Here's the finished thing. Looks kinda freaky huh?

Tastes good though! We do have a stupid number of cookies now though. I'd better go get my stretchy pants out.

23 comments:

Unknown said...

Pizza cookies?! LOve it ;) Are these actually-factually edible? My boys would go crazy!

Lindsey said...

Yep Amber, they are totally nommable. Nom nom nom. I've eaten two already. Burp! :)

Unknown said...

I best not show them lest they want you to adopt them ;)

tracey (aka rainbowmummy) said...

WOW!! I saw a recipe for cookie pizzas a while a go in a cook book I saw in the supermarket, I didn't want the book so I wrote the recipe on the back of my shopping list (and I wonder why I get funny looks.....) anyhoo being the scatter brain I am I lost it, but I have to say, yours is better anyway. I would NEVR have thought of using the fruit leather, awesome!

Cheers x

ps, Good moms eat almost all the baked goodies while the kids are sleeping. Join me in solving child hood obesity. Good moms also wear stretchy pants, Nom nom nom ;)

Anonymous said...

You have some really fab ideas for activities!! I will definitely have to give this a go!

Jess said...

Love these! You have some wonderful ideas! I came across your blog last night from a friend and it's wonderful!

MaryAnne said...

The fruit leather pepperoni looks fantastic, you are such a cool mom!

Beth- the mama bee said...

stretchy pant! love it!

Unknown said...

Can you adopt me, please? You are so seriously the coolest mom ever.

I HAVE to make those with my girls (4 and 2.5). They will flip!

~Marisa

Myrnie said...

The bees knees- if the weather ever cools down enough to bake, this is first on our list of kitchen activities :)

Elise said...

Brilliant idea. They look fantastic. How kind of you to make up kits for the children to take home.

Valerie @ Frugal Family Fun Blog said...

These look positively delightful!! I love how you improvised with what you had on hand. Fabulous!!

Katiecakes said...

What a wonderful idea. I've seen a recipe for small pizza cookies but these are so much more impressive!

Katie xox

LiEr said...

Stretchy pants! Ha ha ha! Oh dear, KM, you've been peeking in my wardrobe. Those enormous cookies are wonderful - lurid and round on the inside, sweet and even more colorful on the outside. I never thought of using one of this aluminium foil trays for a giant cookie! And the pizza! How realistic are those - am glad there are other families who seem to only eat the pepperoni sausage combination. I guess chicken artichoke alfredo thingamajig wouldn't look quite as charming in sugar. Not that our family would even consider vegetables on ours, sadly.

Cath @ chunkychooky said...

Genius!!! what a brilliant idea!!!

Little Nut Tree said...

Oh my, those look goooood!
There's an award for you on my blog:
http://notreallyhomeschooling.blogspot.com/2009/07/award.html
(Of course you may well have received this one already!)

Anonymous said...

Guess what my boys ar doing this week? I love it!

Catherine Peart said...

You seriously have the best ideas ever. My kids get a lot of benefit out of your blog, that's for sure!

Karin said...

What fun cookies!!! Love the idea of letting the kids smash the dough into a pie plate!

The pizza ones reminded me of the pizza cookie my friend's son made for a cake auction recently. They used colored fondant icing to make all the stuff -- that might be fun for your girls to try, since they can shape it like playdough. For the cheese, they colored the fondant a pale yellow, let it get firm in the fridge, and then grated it.

(And if real fondant doesn't interest you, I highly recommend trying out marshmallow fondant.)

2 little seeds- The Montessori Potential said...

Love your blog! I've tagged you for an award. Check out my blog to see it and please don't feel like you need to pass it along as it's kind of "chain letterish" but you may find it to be fun to do and share.

Michelle said...

wow! you aren't just creative, you are super dooper creative! I'll be linking to this on my sunday links post!!

thanks for visiting Her Cup Overfloweth!

Erica said...

Seriously, are you the best mother EVER? I've just spent the better part of an hour going through a bunch of your posts and thinking that my children would probably love to adopt you. I'm definitely bookmarking your site. Thanks for all the fabulous ideas!

printable coupon said...

I love your pizza!! you are really genius.