“Owl” Always Love You Cookies

January 24, 2012 | 96 Comments »

Sorry…I couldn’t help myself.  I’m a sucker for corny Valentine’s sayings.  Not so much because I love the holiday {it’s a birthday in our house} but those corny sayings really take the cookie possibilities beyond conversation hearts and traditional red and pink.

I especially love it that Valentine’s Day gives me a reason to make cute owls.  All the owls I’ve seen in real life are scary and large enough to eat a small child.  That’s why I prefer with cute.  For some reason, child-eating owls aren’t very popular…

ANY-HOO…

Get it, ANY-hooo?

Okay, I’ll stop.

Anywho, back to what I was saying.  Since heart cookies are plentiful this time of year, I decided to use them to for my owl cookies, but you can also use a tulip like I did HERE , or create more realistic {scary, child-eating} owls like my Pinterest-inspired owl cookies.

To make these cookies you will need:

The day before, outline and flood the heart cookies with ivory icing.  If you need help with outlining and flooding, click HERE. On the same day, make eyes by using light gray 20-second icing to make a circle and dropping in candy beads.

If you are not familiar with this technique, click HERE to learn more.

Let them dry and the next day you’ll have eyes like these.

Begin by using a stencil to make flowers on the dry ivory cookie in the area where his eyes will be.  Sometimes when I need to mark a blank cookie but don’t want a visible marker line, I use a needle tool like THIS ONE to scratch a design onto the cookie.

I’ve heard of people using other things, such as graphite pencils {which are non-toxic} to do this, but sometimes people get kind of funny if you write on their food with pencils, so I came up with another way.

If you’re not down with the pencil thing, please don’t send me hate mail or nasty comments.  I just thought I would throw it out there since I’ve heard of it being done and you might have too.

AnyHOO {yes, I am still snickering at my bad joke}, after the cookies were marked, I used Ali-Bee’s great brush embroidery tutorial to make the flower background of the eye.

I’ve been kind of obsessed with brush embroidery lately.  I’m not a pro yet, but I’m learning.  The most important thing I’ve learned is that holding the cookie while working, as Ali suggested, really helps. I didn’t do that the first few times and they didn’t turn out as well.  Moral of the story, when the queen of brush embroidery tells you to do something…listen!

After the flower was finished, I added a blob of icing to the middle and stuck on one of the eyes I made the day before.

Then, I did it all over again to make the second eye.

After the cookies dried a bit, I used ivory piping and dark gray 20-second icing to add the finishing touches.  That wasn’t hard at all, was it?

Now for the fun part.  If these look like something you’d like to try for Valentine’s Day, my friend Lisa, The Bearfoot Baker, made a fancy little treat.  She designed an adorable set of printable bag toppers to match my little owl cookies, because she’s nice like that AND there is no way I could have done it on my own.  To get yours, click HERE.

Speaking of Lisa and owls, this whole collaboration started just a few days ago after a random conversation we had about…OWLS.  The crazy thing is, a few days later, she actually sees a real live owl hanging out in the woods near her house! She even took pictures.  You can check them out when you head over for the printables.

In other news, tomorrow is the day I begin quitting Diet Coke.  I might die. Or turn into a horrible miserable wife that my husband and children fear.  Or I might fail.  But I am going to try.

If I don’t die, I will be back soon with more cookies to share!

Animal Cookies, Cookies, Creative Use of Cutters, Holiday Cookies, Popular Cookies, Tutorials, Valentine's Day Cookies
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