Cookies for a Panda Party!

In case you didn't already know, some people are actually pandas cleverly disguised as humans. When their birthday rolls around, it's best to cook these. (Miraculously found here, just in the nick of time.) I edited it a little because I wanted to only use dough, and I ran out of vanilla.

2 1/2 cups flour
2 sticks butter, or 16 tbsp
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
Black food coloring (if available)

Stir together both sugars and the butter. Next, add your yolks. (I tried saving the egg whites to make meringue cookies, and holy moly my arm hurts from stirring= bad idea.)
Anyway, then all you have to do is stir in your flour until it becomes clumpy. Separate out a little less than a third, and put that in a smaller bowl and stir in the cocoa.


PAIN.


It's best if you have the black food coloring here, even though it's something you only have around during Halloween. However I have the baking genius of my buddy Ms. Jennybeans to thank for my wide selection of food coloring and holiday sprinkles. Anyway, this is why you'll want the black...

Your dough will look like crap. Literally.

So there's that. Anyway, using about half-ish of your darker dough, make two long cords of brown and sandwich them in between three sheets of the white. Then roll it up into one long log, making sure it's really tight and mushed together or it will fall apart in the oven. Wrap it all in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for 15 minutes, and leave out the rest of the darker dough for the ears.





















Yes, that is my grizzly piggy bank in the background.

Okay, so this is the fun part. Preheat your oven to 325, and grease two pans. Start cutting the log up into 3/8" slices. Since my dough still got mashed up after that, I made up a maneuver where I wrapped my thumb and index finger around the slice and pinched the cookie together starting at the center and working my way out, turning as I went.

The pandas get smaller as you get toward the end. Awww.

Once you have all the panda heads made and put on your baking sheet, pinch off enough from the leftover black doughball to make little balls about twice the size of peas. Do the same pinchy maneuver to make them more like a thick coin, then slice it in half. You now have two little semicircles for ears that you have to attach to the head VERY thoroughly. Mash them if you have to, mine all started falling off.

Pre-Oven pandas.

Cook them for about 15 minutes, and cool a little before eating so they stay in tact. Makes about 30 little bears. Also...

Luckiest lady in the history of everything.