Cow Cookies Tutorial

I made these Cow Cookies for a charity bake sale at J's school a couple of weeks ago and they were a big hit so I wanted to keep a step-by-step guide of how I made them so I could make them again in future. They were the first success I had using line icing and flood icing after many failed attempts so I was really pleased about that!

I have the Biscuiteers book of iced biscuits and I used the Plain Biscuit recipe in there which is identical to this one  on the Biscuiteers blog but doesn't have vanilla in. I only needed to cook mine for around 12-15 minutes and they were done. Technically I guess they are biscuits but I am using the terms cookies and biscuits interchangeably here.

I happen to have a cow shaped cookie cutter at home but you can always make your own template using baking paper and then cut around with a knife onto the cookie dough.

Once they were totally cool, it was a case of tackling the consistency issue of the icing. My nemesis - it is what I always struggled with everytime on previous attempts.

The recipe for the icing was once again from the Biscuiteers book which is also available on their blog here. I made a far smaller quantity than the recipe. I think only around a tenth.

As these Cows are quite simple to make, I only needed very few colours which I think helped as I didn't get overwhelmed as on previous occassions. I took my time and really tried to get the consistency right for the line icing.

This was a pale pink (although it looks rather white on these photos) line icing I made. There are some great tips on the Sweet Sugarbelle blog on icing consistency - reading up on exactly what consistency you need to aim for really helps.

1. First use pink line icing to ice ear and muzzle outlines.

I use these squeezy bottles instead of piping bags as I find them easier.

2. Next I used pink flood icing to flood the ears and muzzle area. I had aimed for a darker pink outline and a paler pink flood icing but they ended up pretty similar. Never mind.

3. Using slightly runnier than 'line consistency' white icing, pipe on eyes for the cows.

 4. Next using line icing in black, ice on any cow markings onto your biscuits.

5. By the time I had finished piping the black outlines, the first one was dry enough to pipe the black flood icing onto it. Little black dots can also be piped onto the eyes as pupils at the same time.

 6. The final finishing touch is to use a darker shade of pink slightly runnier than line icing to pipe on the nostrils.

Just as I was about to take photos of the finished cookies, the skies turned grey and the heavens opened with a huge downpour of rain, making it really dark indoors too and trickier to take photos.

I made some 'grass' cookies with the leftover dough and some green ready-to-roll icing I had. The little white flowers are cut out of white ready-to-roll icing. 

 If you want to you could place a little flower on the cows too just next to the left ear.