Thanksgiving Cookies

Tigger and I made these last week for his AWANA/Cubbie group.   They were pretty easy and I think they turned out super cute.    Here is what we did.

Make sugar cookies.   Use the kind from the tube, or make this very simple recipe my mother gave me.

Sugar Cookies

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 cups flour

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mix baking powder and flour, add one cup at a time, mixing after each addition. The dough will be very stiff: blend last flour in by hand (if dough becomes too stiff add water, a teaspoon at a time.)

Do not chill dough.Divide dough into 2 balls. On floured surface, roll each ball into circle approximately 12 inches in diameter and 1/8 inch thick. For quick and easy cookies, use a pizza cutter to make a bunch of square cookies. If using cutters, dip them in flour before each use. Bake cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet on top rack of oven for 6 to 7 minutes, or until cookies are lightly browned.

My oven is a little slow, so I usually bake them in the center of the oven for almost 8 minutes and they turn out perfect. For this batch, I needed circles, so I used my grandmother’s biscuit cutter.

For the turkey features, we used a can of frosting and gel food coloring to get the desired red, yellow, and brown. You can pipe the frosting on by snipping the corner off of a zip top bag, or use a pastry bag. We used plain white frosting as “glue” to hold the candy corn in place.

And just when I thought we were clever, a couple of  friends stopped by yesterday with this.

They were  in a hurry so I didn’t get to ask what ingredients were used.   I’ll give it my best guess though:
Cookie – looks like a gingersnap. Yellow frosting for the base. A blob of white frosting for the mashed potatoes, and a dab of yellow food coloring (maybe?)  on top for the butter. Green non-pareils for the green peas. Red sugar crystals for the cranberry sauce. Chocolate frosting for the gravy. And I’m not sure about the ingredient for the turkey slices, but it looks like some kind of peanut butter candy.   Isn’t it adorable?!?!   It’s almost too cute to eat.   Almost.