Scribble Cookies

{Sorted crayon bits...ready to become new crayons}

{Finished Scribble Cookies}

Out with the old and in with the new... If you are anything like me, you have a large stash of old broken crayons that aren't really being used anymore, but you can't bring yourself to throw them away. In thinking about ways to re-purpose these bits and pieces, the obvious place to start was by making new crayons. 

Materials:

• broken crayons
• muffin pan
• foil cupcake liners



{Ready to go into the oven}

• oven

Optional Materials: 

• cookie sheet
• metal cookie cutters
• aluminum foil
• pencil sharpener

Basic Directions:

1. Heat oven to 200 degrees F. You don't want to use a higher temperature because wax is very flammable.
2. Line a muffin pan with foil cupcake liners.
3. Fill the liners with crayon bits. We filled them about 1/3 to 1/2 full.
4. Bake until melted. (The directions I read online said 9-12 minutes. I found that it took closer to 40 minutes! Perhaps it would have gone faster if I had made crayon shavings using a pencil sharpener or if we hadn't filled the foil liners as much as we did?)
5. Allow melted wax to cool completely (about 1 hour) before removing the foil liners.



{Fresh from the oven}

6. Enjoy your new scribble cookies!

Optional Directions*:

1. Heat oven to 200 degrees F. You don't want to use a higher temperature because wax is very flammable.
2. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil.
3. Lay metal cookie cutters on top of the foil and fill them with crayon bits. (We broke them up as small as possible first.)
   
4. Bake until melted. (The directions I read online said 9-12 minutes. I found that it took closer to 35 minutes! Perhaps it would have gone faster if I had made crayon shavings using a pencil sharpener?)
5. Allow melted wax to cool completely (about 1 hour) before removing from the cookie cutters.
6. Enjoy your new shaped scribble cookies!

{Scribble Cookies fresh from the oven}

{Ready to go into the oven}

{The few survivors-before use}

*Note: We found that this method didn't work well for us. Most of the shaped scribble cookies broke when we tried to remove them. The ones that survived were very thin, and Mia broke them right away. (And the cookie sheet was ruined by being coated with wax. Luckily, I had used an old one that I wasn't concerned about.) We ended up taking all the bits and remelting them in the muffin tin with foil liners and making multi-color scribble cookies. There may be a way to make shaped crayons this more successfully, but I can't tell you what it is.

Other Notes: 

• Ovens should only be used by adults.
• As noted in the directions, wax is highly flammable. Please do not heat your oven above 200 degrees F.
• We broke our crayons bits small as possible before melting them. 
• I had previously sorted the broken crayons by color so we could make red, green, blue, etc. (You don't need to do this; I'm just weird like that.) Naturally, Mia wanted to make a few that were multi-colored, too. Both are fun to use and work equally well.
• You may want to keep your scribble cookies away from younger children. They look very much like colorful peanut butter cups (especially the multi-colored ones, which look brown, but when used on paper are colorful.)
• Some of our scribble cookies were thicker than others. My opinion is that thicker is better.
• Scribble cookies seem to work best if you color on an angle. The top layer on each one doesn't seem to have color, just wax.
• Here are some other things to do with old, broken crayons (and my source of info).