Hip to be Sugar

I heard through the facebook-status-update-grapevine about these incredible hippo-shaped sugar cookies found on Balboa Island. Now, I generally love delicious things, but when delicious things are shaped like cute animals, resistance is futile. So I knew I had to find these little guys when I went to Balboa for lunch with a friend this week.

We sat down for lunch at Ruby's on the pier and I said, "So, I've heard about these hippo cookies on Balboa. Can we go look for them?"

"Wait. What?"

"Cookies. Shaped like hippos. They're on Balboa Island. They're like, these fabled, amazing cookies. We have to find them. I don't know where they are though. Can we try to find them?"

Pause.

"Okay, why not?" (She's a good friend. Plus...she knew that protesting would be fruitless.)

So after lunch, we drove all the way around the peninsula onto the island and started our treasure hunt. We had nothing to go on except "Hippo cookies. Balboa Island." But they weren't hard to find.

Tucked away among the trays of donuts in the pastry case at Dad's Donuts, which is famous for its Balboa Bars and chocolate-dipped bananas, is a single out-of-place tray of colorfully decorated hippo-shaped sugar cookies, their icing glistening, rainbow sprinkles (two kinds!) haphazardly thrown onto them the way a five-year-old would decorate a cookie, their alert M&M eyes staring back at you...

We gladly paid $1.75 per cookie, satisfied that we had accomplished our mission. And then, the moment of truth: sitting on the bench outside of the shop, we sunk our teeth into the sugary confections. And....our little hippos didn't disappoint. In fact, they were absolutely fresh and sweet and delicious, not dry as sugar cookies are wont to be, and the icing was perfect. They made our fun outing to Balboa complete.

Don't get me wrong. They're no big deal. I mean, they're just sugar cookies. But seriously...they might just be the best sugar cookies you'll ever eat in your life.