Eat Me!

I have an obsession with Alice in Wonderland: all those kooky characters, the fanciful Wonderland, the ridiculous situations, the memorable quotes, the interesting symbolism, and all that crazy nonsense just appeal to me.

What makes Lewis Carroll's novel even more wonderful is the surplus of food references, from the Mad Hatter's Tea Party to the talk of pepper in soup with the Duchess to the bottle marked "DRINK ME," filled with a concoction tasting "of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffy, and hot buttered toast."

[Photo Credit: Top left and bottom right images from Disney's Alice in Wonderland]

I loved both the book and the original Disney animated version, so when the new Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland came out, I definitely wanted to make something Alice-themed. I remembered the scene in the original Disney cartoon where Alice finds the tempting "Eat Me" cookies (in the novel, it was actually an "Eat Me" cake), and decided that I'd recreate those cookies in real life.

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I'll be entering these cookies in the Eating Your Words Challenge 2010 hosted by Tangled Noodle and Savor the Thyme. The objective? "'Write, spell, or draw' using food or drink."

Eat Me Cookies

adapted from allrecipes

1 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
1 t vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
pink and orange food coloring
1 oz bittersweet chocolate

Cream the butter with sugar. Mix in the egg and vanilla extract. In another bowl, mix the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, and salt. Combine the dry and wet ingredients to form a dough. Split the dough into four parts. Take one part and mix it with a bit of pink food coloring to make pink dough.

Take another part and mix it with a bit of orange and a little bit of pink food coloring to make a peach colored dough. Melt the chocolate and mix it with another part to make a brown dough. Leave the last fourth of the dough plain. Wrap all the doughs separately in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Roll out the doughs and cut out the cookies into various shapes depending on the designs you want (see Shaping the Cookies below) and place on parchment lined baking sheets. Bake them for 8-12 minutes, until cookie edges are golden brown. Let cool on rack. Then decorate with sprinkles and icing (see Decorating the Cookies below).

Shaping the Cookies

General

Roll the different colored doughs out to 1/8 inch thick to cut out all the cookie shapes, except for the checkerboard. Most of the shapes can be made either with a knife (rectangles, squares, stars) or with circle cutters (circles, crescents). The only exception is the wavy pink cookie which was cut out with a circular scalloped edged cookie cutter.

Checkerboard

Take a portion of the uncolored dough and a portion of the chocolate dough. Roll both of them out to 1/4 inch thick. With a knife, cut out 1/4 inch wide strips from both doughs. Take 3 plain strips and 2 chocolate strips and alternate them, pushing them together slightly so they stay stuck in a row.

Make another row with 3 chocolate strips and 2 plain strips and stack that row on top of the first. Repeat until a 5x5 strip block is formed. Then with a knife, cut perpendicularly to the direction the strips are going to make checkered squares.

Decorating the Cookies

Bordered
pink circle cookies
sugar cookie icing
red food coloring
toothpick

Tint the white icing with red food coloring. With a toothpick dot the border of the circle cookies with red icing making sure that the dots are close enough so they touch.

Striped
peach square cookies
sugar cookie icing
pink food coloring
toothpick

Tint the icing with a tiny bit of pink food coloring. With a toothpick draw 3 diagonal lines in the center of each cookie. Then border each cookie with tiny vertical lines of icing.

Take One 1
peach rectangle cookies
sugar cookie icing
red food coloring
toothpick

Tint the icing with red food coloring. With a toothpick trace out "TAKE ONE" on each cookie. Then draw a rectangular border on the cookies.

Take One 2
peach cookies
sugar cookie icing
green food coloring
toothpick

Tint some of the icing with a bit of green food coloring and keep some of the icing white. With a toothpick trace out "TAKE ONE" on the cookies with the green icing. Then draw a wavy line above the writing with a tiny dot underneath the line. Finally take the white icing and draw out the diagonal line border.

Try Me 1
crescent-shaped cookies
sugar cookie icing
pink food coloring
purple sprinkles

Tint the icing with a tiny bit of pink food coloring. Use a spoon to spread the icing on the cookies. With purple sprinkles, spell out "TRY ME" in the center of each cookie. Then place 3 purple sprinkles in a row above the lettering.


Try Me 2
circle cookies
sugar cookie icing
purple sprinkles
toothpick

With a toothpick, draw 3 horizontal lines across the cookie. Then draw 3 vertical lines perpendicular to the 3 horizontal lines. Wait for the icing to dry a little bit. Trace out "TRY ME" with icing on the cookie. Then fill in the iced "TRY ME" with purple sprinkles.

Eat Me
chocolate star cookie
sugar cookie icing
purple food coloring
pink and purple crystal sprinkles
toothpick

Tint the icing with purple food coloring. Use a spoon to ice the star cookies. Sprinkle some pink and purple crystal sprinkles along the arms of the star. Wait for when the icing is almost dry. Then with a toothpick scrape out "EAT ME" from the icing in the center of the cookies.