Storytime Treats inspired by Mo Willems

Even though I am a stay at home mom, I don’t get the chance to go in and volunteer at my son’s kindergarten classroom because my 3 year old is home with me.  To try and make up for this, I often sign up to bring the treats for holiday celebrations and their monthly birthday celebration.

Since February was my son’s birthday month, I signed up and brought in worms’n’dirt as the treat.  I wasn’t intending to do the March treat as well, but when I saw the slot was still open at the beginning of the month I decided that I would tackle it as well.

My son’s Kindergarten teacher has a wonderful initiative called “Friends and Family Fridays” where parents (and siblings!) get the chance to go into the classroom once a month and see what our kids are up to.  This past month, one of the highlights in the classroom was a station set up focusing on children’s author Mo Willems and his characters The Pigeon and Elephant & Piggie.  My son has been big into these books in recent months and it was easy to see where his interest in collecting the books stems from.

As soon as I saw all the Mo Willem’s book in the classroom, I knew these chocolate covered Oreo Pigeon’s I had seen on Catch My Party would make the perfect treat for the class!  I hadn’t had much success working with chocolate coating, but they looked easy enough for me to reproduce and I knew the kids would get a kick out of them.

Supplies

• Golden Oreo’s (I chose golden because I read that the chocolate ones sometimes leave dark crumbs in the melted chocolate and make it look messy)
• Brown Smartie’s or M&M’s – enough for 1 per cookie
• White chocolate candy melt wafers
• Blue candy melt wafers (or blue food coloring to tint white wafers)
• Yellow candy melt wafers

To make the eyes:

Heat oven to 200 F.  Spread white candy melts out on a parchment lined cookie sheet.  Place in oven for 4 mintues until candy melts are soft, but still hold their shaped.  Working fairly quickly, place a brown chocolate Smarties or M&M in the center of each.  Set aside and allow to harden.

Prepare the beaks:

Using a sharp knife, cut each of the yellow candy melts in half.  Place two of the cut halves together on a parchment lined cookie sheet to form an opened beack.  Be sure to leave enough room between beaks to place your coated Oreo’s on top.

Dip the Oreo’s:

Melt the blue candy wafers.  My preferred method of melting is to use my small slow cooker, but you can microwave or do it over a double broiler on the stovetop.  I have the PC brand dip warmer that works great, but this Little Dipper by Crockpot would work just as well.

I found the blue wafers to be a bit intense in color, so I did a mixture of half white and half blue wafers in my little Crockpot.  You can also do all white and color using food coloring as suggested above.

To dip, I dropped the Oreo right into the melted chocolate and then lifted it out using a fork.  To take any excess melted chocolate off, I carefully tapped the fork on the edge of my slow cooker, being careful not to knock the cookie off.

Next, carefully place the blue chocolate coated Oreo on the yellow beak.  I used a second fork to carefully push/slide it off.

Finish off your Pigeon by placing one of the prepared eyes in the middle of the cookie.

Set aside and allow to fully harden before packaging or arranging on a platter.

To accompany my Pigeon’s, I found these adorable Hot Dog Cookies on Taste of Home.  The shortbread recipe couldn’t have been any easier to mix up and they looked just like the real thing topped off with a drizzle of royal icing “mustard”.

Both my son and I were excited to bring the basket of finished treats in to share with the class.