Thanksgiving Cookie Platter

I wanted to share this cookie platter with you on Thanksgiving day, but I got pretty busy so I will have to settle for Thanksgiving weekend!  I had made these Turkey Cookies a few weeks ago and I loved them.  Then I got an order for 2 cookie platters, one for 50 cookies and another for 35 cookies.  The turkey cookies were cute, but since they are made up of 2 cookies, they are much more work.  I thought this platter inspired by one of my favorite cookiers, Sweet Sugarbelle, would be the perfect sweet treat for the holiday.

I designed a feather cookie set to make three sizes of feather cookies.  I baked lots of feather cookies using my favorite recipe (with the baking powder reduced to 1 1/2 tsp.)  I decorated the feathers using 3 different colors.  The most feather cookies were made brown by mixing royal icing with Americolor gel paste in chocolate brown and a bit of super black.  To make the burnt orange color I used orange gel with a touch of warm or chocolate brown.  And the ivory feathers were made by adding just a drop of ivory gel color to the royal icing.

The other turkey cookies I designed were cute but they were not so cartoonish.  I really like how these instagrammed turkeys have giant heads and tiny bodies!  The faces were inspired by the Bearfoot Baker, although I did not make royal icing transfers.  Instead I piped everything directly on the cookies.  For the cener of the eyes I used the dark chocolate brown that I already had on hand.  You can purchase the cutter set I designed to make your own platter here!