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!

Hi I’m Melissa, and I’m bad at icing sugar cookies.  Okay, I can get my royal icing to the proper consistency, I can color the icing to every color in the rainbow.  But I can’t look at a blank cookie and create a cute, fancy, intricate design.  I have spent years dabbling with royal iced sugar cookies and I have gotten the basics down!  I finally realized that I need to be esigning cookies my own way.  I can decorate a simple design really well.  So I deconstructed the turkey and created 2 simple designs.  The feather cookie is a simple design, and the turkey cookie is simple as well.  When they get stacked together…tada! Here’s a breakdown of how I made these.

I was going for an orange brown color for the turkey, I guess I ended up with a pumpkin pie color, but I  like it!

This is the exact color I envisioned for the feathered wings.  I used Sweet Sugarbelle’s color tutorial on these cookies, it was so helpful!  I had a few ideas for the look of the feathered wings so I tried them all.  I definitely don’t love how all these styles look, but I was playing around.

I added white eyes, a dark brown center iris, and yellow beak and feet.  I used the tutorial from the Bearfoot Baker to make the uneven crazy eyes.  I didn’t make royal icing transfers because these cookies were pretty small, but I used the same idea.  I had a few ideas for the look of the turkey feet as you can see here, but in the end I only liked one of the choices.

I forgot to take a separate picture, but added the red hanging thing to the turkey beak (did you know it’s called a snood?  I did not).  I also decorated the feather cookie extremely simply, kind of looks like a peacock.  Here you can see the cookie cutters I designed to cut these cookies.  I have had this cookie idea for a while, but I am not a fan of cutting cookies by hand.  With this cutter set, it makes cookie making much more fun!  You can buy the cutter set here.

Gobble gobble.