Cinco de Mayo!

Happy Cinco De Mayo! It is my nephew John's birthday party today, so my sister in law decided that she wanted to make something special for the party.   She illicited my help to make Pinata cookies. I was intrigued. I checked out the recipe, and it looked like fun! Here are some pictures from our escapes to make these cookies!

If you would like to make these cookies yourself, check out:http://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/articles/958083/cinco-de-mayo-pinata-cookies 

Here are the colored doughs I decided to work with: yellow, green, orange, red, purple and blue. The dough was very easy to work with, sort of like playdough! It was easy to color with the gel food coloring. The dough gets spread in layers into your mold.

Then, slices of the dough are baked in the oven. See how pretty the layers look?!

Here, Katie and I are cutting out the shapes- we had cows and pigs, there were no donkey cookie cutters to be found in any stores!
You need to cut the cookies out when the cookie is still warm, so there is a bit of an assembly line feel to making these cookies!
You need 3 cookies per pinata. The middle cookie gets a hole cut in the middle for the surprise in the center!

These are mini M&M's. I know what you are thinking. Why did I take a picture of them, why am I making a big deal about mini M&M's?
Well, not only are they what will be going in the middle of these pinata cookies making them the coolest cookies ever, but a word to the wise: you cannot find these M&M's anywhere! Katie had to go to more than 3 stores to find them, they don't carry them in supermarkets, at least the ones in Granby, CT, as there is one mysterious woman who buys all of the bags she can get her hands on when they are shipped to the store. She buys them so often, almost weekly, that when Katie asked after the mini M&M's the people at the store told her that they are always sold out to the same woman! On the down low she heard that there may be some at CVS, so she called them and they put two bags ( the only two bags in the store) aside for her! These are REALLY special mini M&M's!

Here is the whole herd! This isn't a very good picture and you really  don't get a sense of how cute they are! We got 18 cookies out of the two batches! It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun!

Here is Katie's picture of one of the pinata cookies! A success!