Pinata Results and Fun Things

Pinata Cookie Outcome

Hello, friends! I wanted to bring some closure to the weekend extravaganza of cooking and baking with the results of the pinata cookies. I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breath for the results. Because I was a little uncertain about the dough in the original recipe, I decided to use a basic sugar cookie recipe for my cookies instead. Simple and makes 60(!) cookies. It gave me about 20 pinata cookies with a few spare cookies in case of breakage.

The pinata cookies became a bit more of an agglomeration of every holiday cookies. In theory, they are still true to the spirit of the pinata. Holiday #1 - Cinco de Mayo. However, they became a bit more conceptually abstract as the process progressed. As I mentioned before, I couldn't find mini M&M's anywhere (has anyone found them since?), so instead, I decided to use what we had in the pantry: red and green M&M's. Holiday #2 - Christmas.

Over the years, I've inherited a bunch of baking supplies from my grandma and have thus accumulated a LOT of cookie cutters. We're talking bags upon bags of cookies cutters. Among the bags, I discovered that I had concentric heart-shaped cookie cutters and decided to use these as the inspiration for my shapes. Holiday #3 - Valentine's Day. It also means that unlike in the original recipe, you can cut out all of your shapes before you bake and can take advantage of the symmetry of the cookies during assembly. Nice!

Heart-shaped cookie cutters

When the cookies were hot from the oven, I simply cut out a smaller middle heart in every third cookie. Each cookie requires a sandwich of three individual cookies. The side benefit of this procedure is a bunch of heart-shaped little cookies in addition to your big cookies!

Bonus cookies!

The cookies were assembled using a powdered sugar and milk "glue" that I applied between the layers. The middle cookie has the hole in it and contains the M&M pinata filling.

Almost too much cookie to handle

I ran out of time to make the snazzy stripes out of dough a la pinata, so I simply decided to add some visual interest with a pink, purple, and white powdered sugar/milk drizzle. It gave the cookies a nice modern look and a little extra sweetness. Ta da!

I would definitely attempt these cookies again with different shapes, colors, and fillings. I feel like they would be really fun additions to any summer party!

Fun Things

1. I love baseball. There's nothing quite like a cool summer evening in a ballpark with friends, a hot dog, and a beer. My department's graduate student organization hosted a baseball game this past Monday at Wrigley Field. Tickets were free from my department, and we had a bunch of people come out. It was a great time! AND the Cubs actually won! I've been to three Cubs games since moving to Chicago, and this is the first one I've been to where the Cubs were victorious. Also, the Cubs were running all kinds of promotions, so I was able to score a free Qdoba burrito and a free Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee. I basically got paid to go to this game. Awesome!
   
2. College and grad school have made me regress to my earlier days. In college, I resumed the long-forgotten tradition of napping. In grad school, I've begun eating Lunchables again. This made me wonder: whatever happened to peanut butter and celery? It's simple, classic, and not too unhealthy. Thus, in order to embrace my youth again, I made myself ants on a log for a snack from the celery I had left over from the bolognese sauce a week or two ago. However, since I'm not too keen on raisins, I used dried cranberries. I call it - fire ants on a log. The first grader inside me was jumping for joy.

I'll be updating with more research-y things in the coming days, but I hope you've gotten some inspiration from these baking and cooking ideas. Cheers until next time!