Poop | Megan's Island

Alternative title: why do all of Michael’s favorite things focus on poop?

I’m hoping that it’s normal that a 4+ year old boy is obsessed with farting and poop. They are, right?

Whoopee cushion to computer: everything is flatulent.

Our most recent find comes from Nat Geo Kids: the Dung Beetle Derby game. He’s obsessed. Players have to solve a series of puzzles and games to allow the poop ball to reach the dung beetle who then takes it to the next level. Sounds great, right? We worked together and beat the game in a little more than an hour. The game is fun and tricky.

One of many great NatGeo games

Of course we discovered a great new book: F is for Fart. The alphabet AND animals AND farts? A winner.

It really rounds out our collection of poop books… Everybody Poops, What is Poop, and the classics Toot and Potty.

Our favorite books of late

So what great poop and fart “resources” have you found?

We’re familiar with the What’s inside your butthole? “music video” (thanks, Uncle James), but I’ve opted not to share it here.

Please tell us other books we should be reading and games we should be playing!

You’re familiar with the poop emoji, right? It’s everywhere. I don’t think it’s possible to not know what it is. (In case you don’t know, that’s it over there on the right!)

Over the holidays I made a lot of meringue Christmas trees.

Meringue Christmas trees

As I was making them, over and over again, the swirling really resonated and a genius idea came to me: these could look like piles of poop. Add a couple of sugar eyes and voila! The poop emoji.

So, I went about trying to make them. All meringue recipes are very similar: egg whites, sugar, vanilla, cream of tarter and color or flavoring. I followed this recipe for my poop emoji meringues. As opposed to coloring them brown, I used cocoa powder, so while they look like poop, they don’t taste like it.

I used a standard pastry bag and a #12 tip from Wilton for my emoji cookies. (I used a mid-sized star tip for the Christmas trees.) The raw meringue ‘dough’ is VERY sticky and you want to work fast, because once it warms up it falls flat. Carefully spoon the meringue into the bag and start swirling!

Swirl, swirl, swirl!

The base of the cookies are a little larger than a quarter. This is important to note, as this is where I my first batch of Christmas tree cookies faltered. If you want to do larger cookies, you’ll need a larger pastry tip.

More poop emoji cookies

Pipe the dough while swirling in a circle, on top of itself, leaving a little point at the top. There were a couple of cookies that weren’t perfect, but with the look I was going for, imperfect was perfect. The recipe makes about four dozen cookies, so if there are a couple of mess ups, it’s no big deal. Plus no matter how they look, they all taste the same, which is lightweight and delicious.

Poop emoji cookies

I added Wilton’s sugar eyes on about half of my meringues and that went over only so-so. The meringues cook for a long time at a low temperature. The sugar eyes aren’t supposed to be cooked at all, so they get a little wonky. If you want the perfect look, I would recommend adding the eyes after the meringues are cooked. I bought a white Wilton Sugar Sheet to use for the mouth, but my cookies were too small, as the eyes collapsed the base a bit during baking.