Dinosaur Disaster- The Sequel

For a stay-at-home mom who loves holidays and baking, what could be more exciting than planning her son’s homemade Valentine cards and treats for preschool?  This year, Luke and I chose a dinosaur theme for his Valentines, and we created adorable personalized Valentine cards for his class.  So of course I pulled out our now-infamous stegosaurus cookie cutter (refer back to this post in case you forgot), and attempted to make dinosaur-shaped sugar cookies to accompany our homemade "dino-riffic" cards.   And this is what happened:

  They may resemble aardvarks, anteaters, or some other sort of unidentifiable animal, but certainly were not cute enough to give to 16 other preschool students.  And here’s the annoying part:  I followed the recipe EXACTLY!  I’m a baker, and love this form of cooking because it relies on precise rule-following.  There’s something so satisfying to me about following a specific set of instructions and having the end result be just what you had envisioned, with no surprises.  Martha Stewart’s recipe for cut-out sugar cookies required about 28 steps including: rolling dough to exactly 1/8” thickness, chilling for 15 minutes, placing between 2 layers of parchment paper, placing on cookie sheets in the freezer, adding dustings of flour as to not be too sticky, etc…. The list goes on and on, and that’s BEFORE you even cut out or bake the silly things.  And like the aspiring Martha apprentice that I am, I willingly completed each step, only to end up with unevenly cooked, burnt, and in some cases, decapitated prehistoric cut-outs. 

The good news is that because I anticipated some sort of snafu with this darned cookie cutter again, I made these cookies a few weeks ahead of time, with the idea that I would freeze them until Valentine’s Day.  Being a planner paid off in this case, because I had time to come up with a Plan B:

$26 worth of red, pink, and white Jelly Bellies later, we were all set! (I didn't realize how "gourmet" those jelly beans are when you buy them by the pound).

Luke's Valentines were darling and exactly what he wanted, so it was all worth it:

But, after Stegosaurus cookie cutter vs. Mommy Round 2, I concede defeat.  It's been banned from future cooking adventures and will now be used solely as a stencil for craft projects.  Hope everyone has a DINO-mite Valentine's Day tomorrow!!