so, the bird seed cookies...

Yeah, I should have tested this recipe before I sent it off for the recipe card swap. I will say this, I did not use the EXACT suet recommended in the recipe and that might make a world of difference, I don't know. I did use the recommended bird seed, or at least I thought I did. That is until we made it home and relized there were HUGE peanuts in the mix. Huge peanuts don't help a cookie stay together. My recommendation is to use a millet mix, something with only SMALL seeds! Also, I added the two egg yolks left over to the dough otherwise, I don't think we could've ever managed to get the dough combined.

We rolled the dough out to the recommended 1/4 inch thickness and tried cutting cookies...curse the peanuts!! When the cutting out of the cookies was going south, Lynn took the boys to the pool while I tried to salvage the cookies. I think the dough should probably be rolled to 1/2 inch thickness for stability's sake because after I baked the first batch, two of the six cookies baked apart along "fault lines." The cookies that did survive were strung up with jute and promptly fell apart on the way to be hung in the trees.

I cannot say the project was a total bust though. The boys had a good time mixing and rolling the dough and then crumbling the broken cookies into small chunks for the birds to enjoy. I think from now on we'll stick to pinecone bird feeders or the super cute fruit garlands and birdhouse feeders I saw on Country Style today.