Saint Juan Diego & Our Lady of Guadalupe cookie craft

Am I not here?  Am I not your mother?
                                                   -Our Lady of Guadalupe’s words to Juan Diego in 1531

For this craft, we used
*   cookie dough
*   plastic Easter eggs (fit eggs together with unmatching tops and bottoms)
*   icing that dries hard (like royal icing) or candy melts
*   candy sprinkles
*   small treats to fill the eggs with
*   Catholic Playground template of Our Lady of Guadalupe

First, mix a batch of cookie dough of your choosing.  We used a sugar cookie dough (click here for recipe), which we colored to match the tops of our eggs.  We also left some dough plain.

The cookie dough will become the brim of your “sombrero.”
If you are making multiple colors like we did, you can divide the dough into sections and add food coloring to each ball of dough.

Then place each ball of dough in a small pie tin (ours have a 3 inch base on them) or similar pan.  A jumbo muffin tin or whoopie pan would work well, too.

Press dough firmly into pan. We made ours almost an inch thick.
To create a hole in the center of each “sombrero”, we place the top of the egg in the pan.  Press down firmly…
then pull the egg out.
If you  have trouble gripping the egg (like we did), you can create a “handle” out of scotch tape.
Attach the scotch tape to both sides of the egg, leaving a space at the top of the tape to fit your finger in.
The egg then pulls out easily.

Remove the circle of dough from the  center and bake the cookies. If your dough spreads- like ours did- use the top of your egg once more to cut a clean center in the cookie when the cookies are still warm.
Your cookies will now look like this-

Fill the eggs
with small treats

add an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, then snap the eggs closed.

Click here for the template.
Using royal icing, candy melts or other icing that hardens, line the inside of the center of your cookie with frosting. (In lieu of a frosting bag, a ziploc bag with a small hole cut at one end works well).Put icing on one cookie at a time, then place cookie overthe filled egg. It will be easier to fit the cookie over the filled egg before you have decorated the sombrero and drawn the face on- we learned this the hard way 😉
Now you can decorate your sombreros with frosting and candy sprinkles…
and draw the faces on each egg.

The eggs will roll easily so you may have to prop them against something as you decorate.

We used a black Sharpie to draw the eyes on and also used mustache stickers which we found some in the sticker/scrapbook section of the craft store.

Let the icing and marker dry completely before handling.

For another version of this craft, which uses a plain white paper plate for the sombrero instead of a cookie, see below:

This craft is considerably quicker and could easily be done in the space of a class time. Find step-by-step instructions here.

In front of the bishop, Juan Diego unfolded his white cloth where he had the flowers, and when all the different varieties of roses scattered on the floor, there suddenly appeared the drawing of the precious image of Our Lady of Guadalupe – the Holy Mother of God.

When the Bishop saw the image, he and all who were present fell to their knees.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.
Saint Juan Diego, pray for us.