Chocolate Octopi
Another great day of baking...
Found this recipe in the Usborne book What Shall I Cook?. It's pretty simple, and depending upon what kind of shortening you use (I used softened butter instead of margarine), and how thoroughly you melt or soften, you don't actually have to refrigerate/freeze the dough.
The recipe yields about 10 octopi. With a bit of help from little hands we mixed the ingredients for the dough (butter, sugar, flour, cocoa powder, and an egg). Then we wrapped up the dough in plastic wrap, put it in the refrigerator while I cleaned up the measuring cups, bowls, and spoons.
After the clean up, I took the dough out of the refrigerator and divided the dough into two portions, one for myself (and my youngest, Nols), and the other for W. I divided my dough into five balls of dough. And I showed W the size of the dough balls and set W to work. It was a good size guideline for her to follow, in shaping the dough.
For Noli's octopi, I did the majority of the dough dividing and shaping of the body and legs before she finally took interest and jumped in to use the butter knife to add texture to the octopi. I let her do a bit of "texturing" then I quickly escorted the octopi into the oven before then were sliced to calamari. And of course the decorating went off without a hitch. We used some leftover icing I had to stick on Skittles for eyes and other candy features. Both girls enjoyed taking turns in measuring stuff for the dough making, W enjoyed actually shaping the dough, and both girls enjoyed the decorating, I deemed it a success. I only wish that I had the time and energy to do a talk about the Octopus environment, and life cycle. I guess that will have to wait until tomorrow...
Dividing and shaping the dough balls.
Flattening the dough balls into ovals.
Slicing up the legs.
Into the oven.
Decorating with candy eyes (Skittles by request) and icing (or peanutbutter), for glue.
One finished octopus...
Our Consortium (official term for group of octopi) of Choco-Octopi.
Another great day of baking...
Found this recipe in the Usborne book What Shall I Cook?. It's pretty simple, and depending upon what kind of shortening you use (I used softened butter instead of margarine), and how thoroughly you melt or soften, you don't actually have to refrigerate/freeze the dough.
The recipe yields about 10 octopi. With a bit of help from little hands we mixed the ingredients for the dough (butter, sugar, flour, cocoa powder, and an egg). Then we wrapped up the dough in plastic wrap, put it in the refrigerator while I cleaned up the measuring cups, bowls, and spoons.
After the clean up, I took the dough out of the refrigerator and divided the dough into two portions, one for myself (and my youngest, Nols), and the other for W. I divided my dough into five balls of dough. And I showed W the size of the dough balls and set W to work. It was a good size guideline for her to follow, in shaping the dough.
For Noli's octopi, I did the majority of the dough dividing and shaping of the body and legs before she finally took interest and jumped in to use the butter knife to add texture to the octopi. I let her do a bit of "texturing" then I quickly escorted the octopi into the oven before then were sliced to calamari. And of course the decorating went off without a hitch. We used some leftover icing I had to stick on Skittles for eyes and other candy features. Both girls enjoyed taking turns in measuring stuff for the dough making, W enjoyed actually shaping the dough, and both girls enjoyed the decorating, I deemed it a success. I only wish that I had the time and energy to do a talk about the Octopus environment, and life cycle. I guess that will have to wait until tomorrow...
Dividing and shaping the dough balls.
Flattening the dough balls into ovals.
Slicing up the legs.
Into the oven.
Decorating with candy eyes (Skittles by request) and icing (or peanutbutter), for glue.
One finished octopus...
Our Consortium (official term for group of octopi) of Choco-Octopi.
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