Black History Month Cookie Display
![Black History Month Cookie Display](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-dancers-prebaking.jpg)
![A cookie to celebrate black history month.](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-balletcookie.jpg)
Our dance performance tonight is part of a black history month celebration. My volunteer assignment was to bring cookies for the performers. To celebrate all the hard work that has been put into this performance, I wanted to try to make my cookies a little special but without putting in too much work.
My first idea was to make chocolate cut-out cookies in the shape of dancers. There is a surprising lack of dancer cookie cutters out there. There are many wonderful dancer silhouette shapes, however. I printed out several and cut them out. I used this recipe and read some tips online about freezing the dough before cutting out the shapes as well as just before baking to keep the crispness of the shapes.
![Cutting out the dancer silhouettes.](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-cutoutcookie.jpg)
![Freezing the cutouts before baking.](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-freezingcookies.jpg)
![Dancer cookies before baking.](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-dancers-prebaking.jpg)
![Dancer cookies after baking. They held their shape! The heartbreaking part after this, however, was that most of them broke when I took them off the baking sheet! next time, I would bake them on parchment paper.](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-dancercookies-afterbaking.jpg)
This idea was working but was going to take way too much time for all the cookies. So, I decided at this point to just use a few of the dancer cookies for the display and using one of my no-fail drop cookie recipes for the rest.
With all the other things we had to keep track of during the performance, I didn’t want to have to remember to take home my cookie display. So, I had my husband pick up a tray from the dollar store on his way home from work. I knew I needed the cutout cookies to be able to stand up on this tray. After some thought, here is the method I came up with.
![The display supplies needed: plastic tray from the dollar store, candle and matches, plastic spoons.](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-supplies.jpg)
![I carefully held each spoon over the flame until the plastic began to soften. I then bent the spoon handle to a 90 degree angle and then melted the base of the spoon just enough so that it would adhere to the plastic tray. Be careful handling the hot spoons!](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-meltingspoons.jpg)
![Shaping the melted spoons.](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-meltedspoons.jpg)
![The finished tray with built-in cookie stands.](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-cookiestands.jpg)
![Decorating the cookies with melted chocolate and sprinkles.](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-cookiedecorating.jpg)
![After decorating the cookies, I painted each spoon stand with melted chocolate and attached the cookies to them.](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-dancerdisplay.jpg)
![The last step was to layer on the cookies! Yum!](https://static.beruly.com/2014/02/2014-02-28-finishedcookiedisplay.jpg)
You could obviously adapt this display technique for a number of different occasions. The next time I am at the dollar store, I will stock up on a few of these disposable trays to have on hand for potlucks, summer cookouts or future cookie-making assignments!