Firefly
Kin of the beetle,
you glow like a star,
one you can catch and let go.
– Blaise Moritz
When he was in grade school (I like to think of him in grade school!), my husband wrote a haiku that remains as thrilling, now, as it must have been, then. Since the kids are memorizing poetry [see my previous ketchup post], I thought I’d have them memorize their father’s “Firefly” haiku and learn a little more about the overall form. To do this, I made lunchbox cookies with sections of the haiku imprinted on top along with a special index card that will travel with them every day so that they could keep track of the progress of the poem and learn about the form. Thus, Haiku-kies were born!
There are many ways to make your lunchbox Haiku-kie Happy for the week. For this particular project, I used my own Haiku-kie! Recipe [below] and Williams Sonoma’s Message-in-a-Cookie Cutter Set. This set comes with a full set of type that you arrange along their cookie cutters and impress into the face of a sugar cookie. It’s a great set, and quite flexible in its application, especially if you’re a little on the bookish side. [See my gallery at the bottom of the page for a step-by-step guide.] Still, NEVER FEAR! If you DON’T HAVE specialized cutters, you can easily DO SOMETHING SIMILAR by using thick gel icing to write words on cookies, by filling fortune-style cookies with slips of paper, or by including slips of paper alongside of the cookies when you package them up each day.
Here’s a a printable pdf version of the index card I’ve included in the kids’ lunchboxes this week: The Lunchbox Season’s Haiku-kie! Printable Index Card.
But, do me a favour, people, FIND YOUR OWN HAIKU! For a start, try some of the examples on the bottom of this webpage on the work of poet and translator Robert Hass . Even better, have the kids write Haiku of their own [17 syllables split into lines of 5 (x2) and 7 syallables] and then have them BAKE and EAT their very own Haiku-kies!
Haiku-kies!
Ingredients
Cookies
- 1 1/3 c butter
- 1 c granulated sugar
- 1/2 c brown sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 eggs
- 2 tbs milk
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 4 cups all purpose flour
- [Optional]: Gel or liquid food colouring
Powdered Sugar Icing
- 1-2 c icing sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- milk by the tbsp
- a few drops of food colouring
Instructions
Cookies
- In a mixer or bowl, stir butter until soft.
- Incorporate sugars into butter until light and fluffy.
- Add eggs, milk and vanilla until combined.
- Add powder and salt.
- Add flour by the half-cup until fully combined.
- Divide dough into quarters.
- [Optional: Incorporate food colouring as you see fit]
- Wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 2-12 hours.
- Heat oven to 375.
- Roll dough out 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.
- [I like to roll my dough between wax or parchment paper]
- Cut and "press" cookies per the cutter-instructions or use your own cutters.
- Bake 7-9 minutes.
- Cool completely on wire racks.
Decoration Ideas
- Incorporate gel or drops of food colouring into sections of the dough before you refrigerate it.
- Use small purchased tubes of coloured icing gel to decorate around the words.
- Or, as I did, ice around the typed words with basic powdered sugar icing:
Icing
- Prepare icing by adding vanilla and then milk by the tablespoonful to the icing sugar until a drippable slurry is formed, and then add food colouring as desired.
Aww, this is a brilliant piece of work! =D