An Antidote to Holiday Cookies

The Nature’s Yucky! three-book chil­drens non-fic­tion series fea­tures ani­mals doing what we humans per­ceive as gross behav­iors. My co-author Karen Shragg and I then describe how these yucky actions help the ani­mals survive.

Karen likes to cook and does a lot of exper­i­ment­ing, whip­ping meals togeth­er. Since she likes cook­ing so much, we include a kid-friend­ly recipe in every book. In our first book, Nature’s Yucky!: Gross Stuff that Helps Nature Work, we talk about coprophagy – that is when ani­mals eat scat, infor­mal­ly known as poop. Wild and domes­tic rab­bits do this. And yes, this is real­ly yucky! By re-eat­ing their drop­pings, the rab­bits can squeeze out any left-over nutri­tion, espe­cial­ly in the win­ter when high qual­i­ty food is not available.

So we present, as an anti­dote to fan­cy, charm­ing, hol­i­day cook­ies: Scat Cook­ies. (As you read the recipe, you will dis­cov­er they are real­ly choco­late-chip cookies.)

SCAT COOKIES

• 1 cup but­ter, softened
• 1−1÷2 cups white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanil­la extract
• 2 cups all-pur­pose flour
• ²⁄₃ cup cocoa powder
• ¾ tsp bak­ing soda
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 cup semi­sweet choco­late chips
• 1 cup peanut but­ter chips

Instruc­tions

Pre­heat oven to 350° F.

In a large bowl, beat but­ter, sug­ar, eggs, and vanil­la until light and fluffy. In a sep­a­rate bowl, com­bine the flour, cocoa, bak­ing soda, and salt. Stir the flour mix­ture into the but­ter mix­ture until well blend­ed. Mix in the choco­late and peanut but­ter chips.

Light­ly but­ter your hands. Roll the dough into scat shapes. Place small­er, round­ed scat cook­ies, such as rab­bit scat on one cook­ie sheet and larg­er, rolled and twist­ed scat cook­ies, such as moun­tain lion scat, on anoth­er cook­ie sheet. That way you can bake the two sheets for dif­fer­ent lengths of time if needed.

Bake 8 to 10 min­utes, keep­ing an eye on the small­er scat cook­ies so they don’t burn.

Hap­py scat snacking!