Little Explorers: Fossils with Bite

There’s something about children, dinosaurs and cookies that just go together so well. Here’s a baking activity that combines all three to delicious effect! This week we made fossil cookies – here’s how we did it.

The dough recipe is best made the day before so there is time to freeze or refrigerate it before baking. This helps keep its strong shape and helps the imprints last in the oven.

We looked at dinosaur books and pictures of fossils on the internet. It’s still so funny when the Littlest Explorers tell me ‘let’s google it’. I asked the Little Explorers to collect any toys and items they could find around the house that might make a good footprint or fossil. Using the LittleLife Dinosaur Hi Vis Backpack to collect them in (naturally) they found a super and slightly alternative selection of goodies. It was a great opportunity to have a little dig down through the strata of our toy cupboard and fun classifying the ‘species’ of our toys too, which linked well with older Explorer’s school topic!

To make the cookies you will need:-

• 225g unsalted butter
• 105g granulated sugar
• 280g plain flour
• ¼ tsps salt
• 1 ½ tsps vanilla extract
• 1 large egg yolk

In a large bowl, beat the slightly warm butter, sugar, salt and vanilla extract to a creamy and pale consistency. Then mix in the egg yolk using a wooden spoon so it is thoroughly blended without beating out all the air. Add in the flour gradually until it is just absorbed. This is arm-breaking work, so use an electric mixer if you have one!

Dump this now dry mix on to a lightly floured surface and knead just a few times to make it beautifully smooth and shiny, before wrapping in cling film in the shape of a log. Freeze or refrigerate this for several hours.

When you are ready to get printing, warm your oven up to 170 C or 325 F and line your baking tray with baking paper.

You can slice circles of dough from the log but for authenticity, I would be careful to smudge the edges and make it all a bit more ‘rustic’ and to make the cookies pebble shaped. Then ask your Little Explorers to take a dinosaur for a walk across the dough splodges! Press shells into the dough, or plastic toy millipedes. Use (clean) sticks if you like! Whatever takes their fancy. It’s all about thinking creatively and praising commitment to a project.

Bake these beauties in the oven for around 15 minutes – they will just be starting to turn golden.

These are great for parties and playdates, but congratulations if you manage to prevent them being eaten before they get there!