Homemade chocolate animal crackers

I have been craving animal crackers lately so I decided to find a recipe and make my own. 

Chocolate Animal Crackers
Ingredients:
1/3 Cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
3/4 Cup Flour
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
1/4 Teaspoon Soda
1/2 Cup Oatmeal
6 Tablespoons Honey
1/2 Almond Extract
3/4 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
4 Tablespoons Buttermilk (to make your own it is 1 tbsp vinegar or lemon juice per 1 cup of milk) may not need it all
1/4 Cup Softened Butter
Preparation Instructions:

 Pour the oatmeal into a food processor or blender and pulse it until the oats are near a powder consistency. Next add the ground oats to a large mixing bowl along with the table salt, and then sift them together. Next add in the cocoa powder, white flour, baking soda, honey, almond extract, vanilla extract, buttermilk (just a little at a time), and salted butter. Stir the contents together until a firm animal cracker dough takes shape. If you find that the dough is too dry, then simply add in more buttermilk. You are also more than welcome to either increase or decrease the cocoa powder proportion, it depends on your own taste preference. Moving forward, now that your dough is done, place it in into the refrigerator to chill for one hour (or a little less if you're impatient, it just make sit easier to roll). Once the dough has chilled, roll it out on a floured surface to an eighth inch thickness. Using flour dipped animal cracker cutters, or play-doh cutters, create a variety of different cracker shapes. Place the cut out crackers on to a greased cookie sheet. You will want to bake the chocolate animal crackers at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, for roughly ten minutes. Once baked, be sure and let the animal crackers cool on wire wracks.
These are great with frosting on them too, but that ups the calorie count. These are a nice snack dipped in milk too!
As far as the Weight Watcher point value is about 25 pts. for the whole recipe!!  Depending on the size of cookie you make will determine the serving size for you.  I made ab out 50 cookies of the size in the picture, and then about 50 more little cookies about the size of quarters (plus a few cookie's worth of dough that I ate =) ).  Not too bad.  It's a pretty yummy snack!  I especially love the taste of the cocoa and almond extract.

When I made mine, I had to add a little more flour because I used all the buttermilk, so only add as much buttermilk as you need to make it manageable to roll.  If it is a little sticky, that's okay.  It firms up when it is in the fridge.

Here is the link to a website that has tons of animal cracker recipes:  http://www.animalcrackers.net/

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