Create a list of articles to read later. You will be able to access your list from any article in Discover.
You don't have any saved articles.
Dinosaur footprint cookies recipe
Not your average dinosaur cookies. These tasty biscuits are fun to bake with kids and make a colourful addition to a dinosaur-themed party.
The biscuit recipe makes a soft dough, easy for making footprint-shaped holes with the foot of a toy dinosaur.
Ingredients:
350g (9oz) plain flour
pinch of salt
175g (6oz) butter, room temperature
100g (4oz) caster sugar
green food colouring, if desired (colouring paste is preferable - if you use liquid food colouring you may need to use quite a lot, which will make the dough even softer)
1 small egg, beaten
chocolate spread for sandwiching biscuits together
You will also need:
round cookie cutter, approximately 6cm in diameter
dinosaur model toy of suitable size (to make at least one footprint per biscuit), cleaned and dry
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 170°C/340°F/gas mark 3½. Cooking the biscuits at a moderate temperature avoids them turning brown.
2. Sift the flour and salt together into a bowl.
3. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs (this step can also be done in a food processor).
4. Stir in the sugar and food colouring (if using).
5. Bind the mixture into a soft dough with the beaten egg. You don't want the dough to be too soft to roll, so just add half the egg mixture to begin with and see if more is required. If it looks too soft, sift in some more plain flour.
6. Wrap the dough and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes - cooled dough is easier to roll.
7. On a lightly floured board, roll out the dough to about 4mm thick.
8. Cut into rounds with a cookie cutter. Reroll the pastry scraps and cut more rounds.
9. Take half of the rounds and cut dinosaur footprints into them: take the dinosaur and lightly dust its foot with flour, then squash the foot into the dough to make the footprint holes.
Using a model dinosaur's foot to make footprint holes
10. Place all the rounds on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. (If your dough looks very soft at this stage, you can pop it into the fridge for 15 minutes to firm up.)
11. Bake at 170°C/340°F/gas mark 3½. Check after 15 minutes: the biscuits are done when the underside looks dry and might have begun to colour slightly, but will still be soft.
12. Cool on the baking tray for a few minutes so that the biscuits firm up, then slide them off and finish cooling on a wire rack.
13. Sandwich the biscuits together (one with footprints and one without) with chocolate spread.
Did you know?
Different dinosaurs had different numbers of toes. For example, Iguanodon and Tyrannosaurus rex had three toes on each foot, while Triceratops had four and Diplodocus five (like humans but with a few additional claws).
Some dinosaurs that walked on four legs even had a different number of toes on their front and back feet - Stegosaurus had five toes on its front feet but just three on its back feet.
