Unicorn Poop Cookies

Yummy note: It was like Christmas in July for this month's Secret Recipe Club assignment time. Why? Well, with school starting up again here, I wanted to be able to pick out a fun kid-friendly recipe for this month with my kitchen helper shadows. I knew when I got my assignment, it was a perfect fit for us to pick from. The blogger I received was one that I have secretly stalked in the past few years! :o) Erin from Making Memories With Your Kids was the lucky recipient and she has such a fantastic site that features a bunch of recipes, to cutesy crafts, and fun activities to keep you and the family busy!  I had seen these Squigglers from her site a while back, and my kids enjoyed those guys here. Then last year, Erin made some brownies in eggs that my kids flipped over!  What a fun April Fool's Day treat we had with our friends! So I knew this time around, I had to find yet another amazing recipe to use. We thought of the Martian Cookies as we have home-grown zuchinni's coming out of our ears still with my little garden box producing plenty; but we were looking for some real hands-on fun. So I consulted my husband for his input too; he found the Play Doh Cookies, but I vetoed that and went a step above Play Doh Cookies for Unicorn Poop Cookies! Both had fun color, but when you can add sparkles and sprinkles and frosting, it is way better according to my daughter :) They could still play with their food (aka, cookie dough, which won my kids over. I think they enjoyed eating the cookie dough part more than making creations though! Thanks, Erin from Making Memories With Your Kids for such a fun post, as I made some great memories with my kids making these cookies!

Unicorn Poop Cookies 

Ingredients: 
1/2 cup of butter, softened (or we used a soy margarine for dairy-free option)
1/2 cup of margarine
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla
2 1/2 cups of flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
Food coloring
sprinkles
pearl ball decorations
sparkling gel
Shimmery sugar dust/flakes


Directions: 
Cream together margarine, butter, and sugar. Add in the eggs and vanilla. Slowly add in your flour, salt, and baking powder; adding too much too fast results in a large cloud of flour dust. Trust me, on that one... Once the dry ingredients are mixed in, divide the dough into 5 or 6 smaller bowls. Add in a few drops of food coloring and stir into dough until well incorporated.

Chill the dough for about an hour so it is easier to handle and roll out into "snakes" or strips. Next sprinkle a little flour on your work surface so that the dough doesn't get sticky while rolling out your snakes. Erin suggested to make one long snake out of each color and then put the separate colors all together at the end to make one big combined color one. I think that plan would have been easier than what my kids decided to do. They each wanted their own snakes to play with while designing their cookies, so I went for it... This took considerably longer to create cookies, so I'm sure Erin's route from the beginning was much faster to do, as I ended up creating a larger snake once my kids were "done" making their creations and it was moving along much faster :) Either way, makes snakes and let the kids have a good time manipulating the dough into whatever colorful unicorn poop creation they'd like! So check out Making Memories With Your Kids for better visual of the creation of he larger snakes if you need!

Once your creations are ready to bake, place them in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 8 minutes. After you take the cookies from the oven, place the pearl balls into the cookies before they cool or else they will fall off. If the cookies are already too cool, just add them at the end after you put on the decorating gel or glaze. We made a quick vanilla glaze too, with just powdered sugar and a little bit of water.

So what was the review: I got a couple of "stinky p-u's" from my little guy who is 2 1/2, who thinks anything associated to the word "poop" means stinky or gross, but then retook his statement to "mommy, yummy" after he ate it :)  Then my older 7-year old daughter proclaimed that unicorn poop cookies are super cute and funny, especially when you can say the word "poop" and not get into trouble. :) Also, the cookie ingredient base is a pretty delicious tasting cookie, so if you are scared of all of the color, just try to make the cookies without the coloring to enjoy a soft, not too crumbly sugar cookie.

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