April Foolishness

We're getting a little antsy after being cooped up inside for the past 5 months!  So last night, in celebration of one of my favorite holidays (yeah, I know it's not a holiday, it's a just-plain-fun day!), we made some April Fool's treats to take to daycare.  My little sous chef helped me find the 'recipe' we were going to make:  Hamburger Cookies!  So we headed to the grocery store to pick up our ingredients:

• 2 boxes Nilla wafers
• 2 packages Keebler Grasshopper cookies
• 2 tubes red frosting
• 1 tube yellow frosting
• 1 pkg. flaked coconut
• Green food coloring
• Gold cupcake sprinkles

I suppose we probably wouldn't have needed 2 boxes of wafers, but we're very particular about our buns.  (Har har har.)  I realized about 10 minutes into our project that this was going to be a crapload of cookies, but we had to make enough for both classrooms (about 24 w/teachers in each room).  This was a GREAT project for my little helper: there were plenty of steps she could do all by herself, and counting out the number we needed was good for sharpening her math skills too!

We started by placing 48 Nilla wafers flat side up for the bottom "bun".  Then, we piped a circle of yellow frosting around the bottom edge of a Grasshopper cookie (we quickly found that the frosting stuck much better to the smooth dipped cookie than it did the crumbly Nilla wafer)

and then smooshed the two cookies together so that the "cheese" (or maybe it's mustard, I dunno) oozed out the sides slightly:

While Mommy was busy piping frosting circles, Chef Asha dumped the bag of coconut in a covered bowl and put about 4 drops of green food coloring in, put the lid on, then tossed.  After the bottom half of the sandwich was assembled, we added the "lettuce", like so:

We were having so much fun up to that point.  Then came the "sesame seeds".  Not so much fun.  I put some Karo syrup in a little bowl and added about a tablespoon of water, then put it in the microwave for a few seconds to soften it up. We used a little paintbrush to brush some syrup/water mixture onto the "bun lid", then dipped the lid into a pile of the sprinkles we had dumped onto a plate.  This was a lot more painstaking and sticky than the rest of the operation had been, but still not entirely that bad.

Once our lid was properly sesame seed'ed, we added a larger dollop of frosting, this time, red for "ketchup".  Of course we had to apply it to the 'lid' to act as the glue that holds the cookie together.  When we smooshed, it nicely adhered the top bun to the lettuce & patty, and actually looked a lot like ketchup!

And VOILA!!!  We haz cheeseburgers.

So then we made 47 more of them.  They actually held together really well!

Aren't they cute?  And my little Chef had to taste-test one just for good measure you know.  Mommy tried one too, and you know what?  They were actually pretty darn tasty, for store-bought cookies!



We really did have a blast making these together.  Probably not something I'd do every week for a project, but definitely a fun way to play a harmless little joke on their buddies.  Asha kept going, "it looks like a tiny cheeseburger, but it's a COOKIE!  GET IT!?" *hysterical laughter*  Both kids were so excited to take them to share with their friends today (a rare phenomenon when they both actually want to share!)  Noah kept saying "hangurger!", so I'm not quite sure what he'll think when he bits into one!  And I can't wait to hear what all the kiddos at daycare thought of our little April fool! 

Happy April Fool's Day!