Have you got a little dinosaur lover in your household? Then this might be the perfect activity (and snack) for them. These dinosaur fossil cookies both look and taste amazing, and making them is half the fun!

Any plain cookie recipe can be used for this sweet treat but I’ve just used the recipe below:

1 cup of softened butter
1 cup of white sugar (or if you’re health conscious, rapadura sugar is a good substitute, as is honey, though you’d use less honey - about 3/4 cup - and you may need to add a little extra flour to avoid your batter becoming too liquid)
1 egg
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
3 cup all-purpose plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder (optional)
Don’t forget your dinosaur figures for stamping! We’ve used small dinosaurs from the Safari Dinosaur Toob and the larger Schleich Tyrannosaurus Rex 2018 footprint, but you can use whatever dino imprint you like.

1. Mix all ingredients (except the cocoa powder) in a bowl well. This is a great step where the kids can be involved, and my daughter simply loves mixing anything.

2. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap (or beeswax wrap if you don’t use cling-wrap in your household) and chill in the fridge for 1 hour. Preheat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius.

3. On a floured surface, roll your dough into smallish balls and press down to a thickness of approximately 1cm. The size of your cookies will depend on the figures you use to make the imprints.

4. Use your dinosaur figures to stamp the cookies. 

5. (Optional) I’ve also dusted the inside of half of my batch with cocoa powder to make the imprint stand out more, as I can’t decide which I prefer so I did both. To dust, I used a small paintbrush.

6. Using oven mitts, you can now place your cookies in the oven, on a tray, leaving a space of approximately 3cm between each biscuit. Cook for 10 minutes or until lightly golden. Ensure only adults complete this step to avoid little ones getting burnt.

7. Leave to cool on the tray. This step is more important than you might think because when the cookies are hot, or even warm, they may break when handled too soon.

And there you have it, awesome dinosaur fossil cookies for a prehistoric party or simply for a school holiday or after school baking activity. They are super fun additions to your child’s lunchbox at recess time.

You can make more realistic fossil cookies with the Dinosaur Skulls Toob, or MiniZoo also stocks a number of other more specific options such as the Prehistoric Life Toob, Dino Babies Toob, Feathered Dinos Toob, and the Carnivorous Dino Toob. 

If you’d rather make something that you can play with many times over, you could use this same procedure but with salt dough or even clay from your local craft store - but then you miss out on the delicious treat.

Also, you don’t have to just use dinosaurs! Any animal footprint would do the trick to satisfy all the little members of your family. Check out MiniZoo’s range of animal figures and get baking!

If you decide to give these a go, please take a photo and share it with us on Facebook or Instagram. We’d love to see your sweet creations.

Jenna @ MiniZoo