Pinata Cookies

Did you hear the joke about the pinata?
Yeah, I didn't either.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!  

Yesterday we had horrible, gross, rainy, yucky, no good, very bad weather.  Trying not to get too stir crazy, we decided to try our hand at some Pinata Cookies.  These cute cookies are filled with mini M&M's chocolate candies!  How freakin' fun are these?  I never heard of them before a year or so ago, when my husband's mother showed me this super adorable Mexican-style treat.  

Make sure you have plenty of time to devote to these, perhaps a helper, and some extra arm muscles (mine are still tired....).  Although, they take forever, the result is absolutely worth it.  They even make noise when you shake them.

You can make your own sugar cookie dough (like I did) or save some time with store  bought.  I think the homemade dough tastes better, but whatever you are feelin' up to.  

Here's what you need:

For the sugar cookie dough:

1 1/2 cups butter, room temperature

2 cups of sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon of vanilla

5 cups of flour

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1 teaspoon of salt

For the Pinata Cookies:

a variety of food coloring

1 loaf pan

plastic wrap/tin foil

a burro cookie cutter (see additional post for how to make your own)

a small square cookie cutter (see additional post for how to make your own)

1 16oz container of vanilla frosting (or make your own)

Mini M&M's

Silpat mat (optional, but makes life easier)

pastry cutter (optional, but makes it easier)

Take out 1 1/2 cups of butter and left soften.

Add 2 cups of sugar into stand mixer.

Add butter.

Cream together.

Grab yourself 4 eggs.

Crack and discard shells.

Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

Add eggs and vanilla to butter-sugar mizture.  Mix together.

Add 5 cups of all purpose flour to a bowl.

To the flour, add 2 teaspoons of baking soda and 1 teaspoon of salt.

Fork or sift together.

Get a large bowl.  Dump in dry ingredients.

Add wet ingredients.

Bring together with a wooden spoon.  Then, get in there with your hands and fully combine until you get....

...a giant lump of dough, hoo-ray!

Divide dough into 6 pieces (or more, if you want more colors).

Add food coloring (I made a black first).

Mix together with your hands until color is evenly distributed (this is the arm work out part).  Once color is mixed, wrap the dough ball in plastic wrap and place in the fridge until all colors are done.

Green!

Make orange.  Get your dough.

Add yellow and red food coloring.

Mix together with hands.  (Knock, knock.  Who's there?  Banana.  Banana who?  Knock, knock.  Who's there?  Banana.  Banana who?  Knock, knock.  Who's there?  Orange.  Orange who?  Orange you glad I didn't say banana?)

Yellow!

Purple-ish.... (I started to run out of red food coloring...)

Blue.

Get your loaf pan.  I lined ours with plastic wrap, but looking back, I would recommend using foil, then plastic wrap.  We had some trouble getting our layered dough out of the pan after it chilled in the freezer.

Get you dough balls out and start layering.  I used black first.  Use your fingers to spread evenly in the pan.

Next layer, green.

Spread out with your fingers.

Spread as flat as you can....dosen't have to be perfect.

Add orange layer, repeat even-ish spread.

Layer yellow.

Gettin' there.

Layer purple.

Ah fingerprints....so close.

Last layer!  Hoo-rah, hoo-rah!

Purdy pile of layers.

Cover.

Admire your handy work.  Then place in freezer for 30 minutes to chill.

After the dough lasagna chills, take out of loaf pan (this was a slight struggle).

Using a pastry scraper, slice layered dough loaf.  Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

Layers of color.  Yay!

Cute cookie cutters (see how to make your own in the following post.)

I took two pieces of layers and squished the ends together.  Then, used the cookie cutter to cut two donkeys out.

Place on a parchment lined cookie sheet.  Mini-donkeys!  Or burros!

How cute and colorful!

Adorable.

There were a lot of scrapes (left corner), so I took the small square cookies cutter and made some mini-bite sized square cookie sandwiches as well.  (Cut out square, bake the same as the donkeys or on the same sheet, let cool, take two cookies and place vanilla frosting in-between.)

Into the 400 degree oven for 8-10 minutes.

Let cool (not entirely, half-way) on a baking sheet.

Each pinata cookie takes 3 donkeys.

Cut off horn and feet from middle donkey.

Using square cookie cutter, cut out middle rectangle.

Use vanilla icing to attach (glue) middle donkey to bottom donkey.

Fill middle cavity with mini M&M chocolate candies.

Add more vanilla icing to attach top donkey.

Sandwich together.

Cuteness.

You could totally add eyes with icing (but per usual we were running late to the party).

Repeat and make lots of cute pinatas.  See next post on how to make your own cookie cutters.