Planes, Trains and…Dinosaurs?

A presumably lactose-intolerant member of our household purchased some Ovaltine awhile back without realizing it cannot be made with water. And though he tried several other substances for a mixing base, ultimately he gave up and the jar sat in the pantry. And sat. Until I decided to take matters into my own hands and bake with it.

Around the same time as the Ovaltine purchase, Avi was given two sets of fancy copper cookie cutters – dinosaurs and trains. You probably already know where this is headed.

First, the recipe. I just took a standard sugar cookie recipe and made some modifications, as usual. The biggest change was the addition of the Ovaltine, but I also had to get creative with the flour and the fat. To whit:

Ovaltine Sugar Cookies

2 cups bread flour (because that’s all I had left)
1/2 cup (one stick) unsalted butter
1/4 cup plain yogurt (because I didn’t have a full cup of butter) (and actually, I used Greek yogurt)
1 cup dry Ovaltine
1 large egg
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon Kosher salt

Cream the butter and sugar (I used a hand mixer because I still don’t have a Kitchenaid), then add the egg and yogurt. I split the Ovaltine between the wet and dry ingredients because I wasn’t sure where it should go. The rest went in with the flour, salt and baking powder, which Avi did an excellent job of stirring up. I also added wet to dry when I realized I’d mixed up my bowls, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. I used the hand mixer for that part, too.

Split the dough, wrap it in wax paper and tuck it in the fridge for an hour, or longer if your son takes a really good nap.

When it’s time to roll it out, you can either roll on the wax paper or dust your counter (or whatever) with powdered sugar so the dough doesn’t stick. It shouldn’t, though, because it’s been chilled and it’s not a very moist dough to begin with.

Roll to 1/8″ or so. I know most recipes tell you 1/4″, and you can totally do that with this one if you want, but we preferred the thinner, crispier cookies. Just saying.

You’ll notice I did these on a silicon baking mat. Show off.

Bake for about 9 minutes at 375. Cool on a rack.

We got a whopping 80 cookies out of the dough (wait til you see what that does to the calorie count, below!) both because Avi’s cookie cutters are on the small side and because we did more of the thinner cookies in the second and third batch. It’s been years since I made cookies this way, and we had fun switching between the train cars and dinosaurs. (Side note: when I took the PSAT, I noted on all my paperwork that I was interested in pursuing a career in paleontology. True story. So part of me still weeps a little when I see physiologically incorrect dinosaur shapes. And then I get the hell over myself.)

We had even more fun eating them. I mean, come on. How often do you get to bite the head off a tyrannosaurus rex?

And I will admit to setting up a diorama on the kitchen counter involving a terrible train crash when the track was unexpectedly overrun by a trio of large rabid dinosaurs, working together in a technically-impossible-yet-surprisingly-efficient killing unit for two herbivores and a carnivore who didn’t even live during the same periods of the Mesozoic…but um, someone convinced me not to post those pictures.

So on to the data, shall we?

Nutritional information for Ovaltine sugar cookie, 1/80th of recipe (!!), approximate: 36 calories, 1.2 grams fat, .7 grams saturated fat, 5.7mg cholesterol, 39.3mg sodium, 5.9 grams carbohydrates, .4 grams fiber, 2.5 grams sugar, .4 grams protein.

Awwww yeah. Go ahead, bite the head off another t-rex. These guys are practically healthy!