Gobble gobble. Turkey day is almost here! We’re celebrating by bringing you some creative cookie fun. Sharon Zambito (sugarshack) of SugarEd Productions put together these crafty feathered friends using Nutter Butter cookies, marbled royal icing and a little bit of yellow fondant. Scroll down to see how she did it! She’s even shared her very own recipes for sugar cookies and glace icing!

Materials

1 recipe of your favorite sugar cookies
Candy eyes
Extruder
Large flower blossom cutter
Large circle cutter
Melted chocolate (for glue)
Nutter Butter cookies
Royal or glace icing (both outline and fill): red, brown, orange and yellow
Toothpick
Yellow fondant

Sugar cookie recipe

1 cup sugar
1 cup butter
1 egg
1 tsp each vanilla and almond flavoring (as desired)
3 cups all-purpose flour, sifted

Cream sugar and softened butter.
Add egg and flavorings and beat for a minute or so.
Add flour 1 cup at a time until just incorporated. Knead gently for 1 minute. Dough is ready to roll out and use right away.
Bake at 325 °F.

Glace icing recipe

1 pound powdered sugar
6 TBS light corn syrup
6 TBS milk
Clear flavorings as desired

Combine all ingredients in bowl and mix well with a whisk. Adjust with more sugar or milk to create outline and flooding consistencies.

Instructions

Bake your favorite cookie recipe and cut out large blossom shapes. After cooling, cut a portion off the bottom to make a flat bottom edge. Outline your cookie with thickened icing and flood in your main color. I used glace icing here, but you can also use royal.

Immediately pipe in the above pattern with the other colors in flood consistency icing. It will sink right in. Then take a toothpick and drag it through that pattern, starting from the outer edge of the cookie, in toward the center.

Do this 3-5 times in each section of the blossom. You will create the feather pattern you see above. Let that fully dry, about 24 hours.

Use Nutter Butter cookies to make the turkey body. Take the cookies apart, scrape off the peanut butter, happily eat that, and then cut the bottom portion of the cookie off. Happily eat that too. Dip the cookie in melted chocolate and let dry fully.

Use candy eyes, and royal icing to pipe the beak and red jiggly neck thingy. (Been getting a lot of use out of those candy eyes lately too. They rock.)

When you are ready to assemble, outline and flood a circle shaped cookie for the base. Let that set up for a few hours, but not until it is fully dried through. At this point you can put the feather cookie and body cookie on top of the base cookie. It will sink down a little bit into the still partially wet icing. When that fully dries, it will hold the whole cookie together. You might have to prop up the back of the cookie with a little something while it is drying to keep it perfectly upright. Let that base surface dry very well.

Use a clay gun to extrude a thick string of yellow fondant. Smash down one end with your finger and then cut out notches to make the feet.

Bend the feet up at the ankles and put them in place. I also used a very thin clay gun string in black to outline the base cookie to give it a little pop.

Turkey time! How cute would these be on your Thanksgiving place setting? Or lined up on a dessert buffet.

I hope you try these. You will seriously impress your family and friends!