South America: Cookie Map

I use the same cookie dough recipe every time I make a cookie map or gingerbread house.  It makes a very hard, solid biscuit which can be rolled very thin and still remain in tact after baking.  It tastes good as well!

Dough for Map Making

Gather:

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 1/2 cups plain flour
• 1 egg, beaten
• pinch salt

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 180

Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Sift in flour and add egg, salt and vanilla essence.  Mix thoroughly together.  Gather dough together and refrigerate until hard.

Making the Map:

Roll out dough onto floured surface and transfer to paper lined baking tray.  Photocopy a map of South America, cut around the shape of the continent.  Place cut out over dough and using a small sharp knife cut around the continent shape.  Place continent shaped dough onto greased baking pan and bake at 180 for 15 or so minutes until light golden brown.  It will harden as it cools:

Adding Details to the Map:

We used Toblerone squares for the Andes Mountain Range, yellow sugar cake decorations for the Atacama desert, blue icing pen for the Amazon river, green gum sweets chopped up for the amazon rain forest:

We were quite pleased with the result:

The girls were able to name and place all the main geographical features, although neither remembered the name of the Atacama Desert:

A good job girls!

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