Owl Cookies

Instructions

Baking your Cookies:

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F.
2. Add the flour to your cookie dough in a large mixing bowl and work it in by hand.
3. Roll out your cookie dough on a floured cutting board to about 1/4" thick.
4. Cut out your sugar cookies using an owl cookie cutter.
5. Place your cookies on a pan with either parchment or a silicone baking mat.
6. Chill your cookie dough in the refrigerator. I chilled mine for about 4 hours. This step is important in order to keep the owl shape from spreading out when these cookies are baked.
7. Bake your cookies in the oven for 7-9 minutes or until golden brown.
8. Allow cookies to cool before icing.

Decorating Your Cookies

9. Now onto the fun part! :) The first step here is to pipe an outline near the edge of the cookie using the white cookie icing. This will prevent the icing in the next step from going everywhere.
10. Next, you're going to flood the cookie with the cookie icing. To do this next step, you'll want to spread the icing over the whole cookie keeping inside the outline you made before. Tip: I poured the frosting all over the cookie, then used a knife to spread it out as much as I could. Then I used a toothpick to spread the icing across the really small hard to reach untouched corners.
11. Onto the candy eyes. For this step, blend the yellow food coloring with a bit of the white cookie icing until you reach your desired color. Pour icing into a piping bag and cut a tiny hole.
12. Pipe the yellow cookie icing from the previous step all over the white part of the candy eyes. Tip: The trick to this step is to hold the candy eye still with a toothpick in the center, while you pipe a tiny bit of cookie icing all around. Then, use a toothpick to spread it out.
13. Once the cookie icing on your cookies has set, frost them with a knife using the whipped frosting in a vertical up and down motion from the top to the bottom of the cookie.
14. Next, once your the cookie icing on your candy eyes has set, you can place those on each cookie up near the top.
15. Onto the best part! :) Grab your black frosting, then pour it out into a small piping bag and cut a tiny hole.
16. Pipe 8 vertical lines up near the very top of the cookie using the black icing.
17. Pipe a row of 4 vertical lines near the base of the cookie, 6 in the middle, then 6 above that using the black frosting.
18. Then, to top it all off, pipe a slightly slanted vertical line just below the eyes and you've got a really cool looking owl! :)