You know those construction paper hand turkeys we all made in elementary school? Yeah, you do. Well here I just transferred that idea to a more edible medium (unless you are still into eating paste?), for a fun holiday cookie or even an activity to keep little ones occupied while adults finish cooking the real bird.
These take a little bit of patience with the fruit roll ups but are otherwise crazy easy and simple to make. Mine of course came out gigantic because I traced my own freaky long hands, but kid-sized hands will yield much more reasonably sized cookies. Any size version will taste delicious.
Gobble gobble!
Spiced Sugar Cookie Hand Turkeys
For the cookies
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 tsp salt
scant 2 1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
To decorate
fruit roll ups, assorted colors and flavors
small leaf or teardrop shaped cookie cutter
white frosting (I used the store bought stuff in a tube)
mini chocolate chips
food decorator pen
- Cream butter and sugar together for 5 minutes with a mixer on high speed, until fluffy. Add egg, vanilla, and salt.
- Whisk together flour and spices and mix into the wet ingredients until completely combined.
- Form dough into a disc and wrap in plastic. Chill at least 2 hours.
- When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. On a floured surface, roll out half of the dough. Use a food decorator pen to trace hands on the dough surface, then cut out shapes with a paring knife. Using a bench scraper or spatula, carefully transfer hand shapes to a parchment lined cookie sheet. Chill at least 30 minutes.
- Bake cookies for 15 minutes, rotating halfway through, until golden brown and set.
- Let cookies cool completely then decorate.
Decorating tips:
- The fruit roll ups were kind of a pain to work with since they are so sticky. I found it easier to cut out the shapes in the fruit roll ups if I cut the squares into strips. That way, I wasn't stretching the entire thing while pulling the shapes apart. It was also much easier to cut out shapes when I layered two pieces together. This will give you darker feather pieces but also means you need more fruit roll ups, so keep that in mind.
- I used all red (Mott's strawberry) fruit roll ups because they were the only ones I found that didn't have tattoos or pre-cut shapes in them. By all means, use whatever you want, and I do think that multi-flavored fruit roll ups would make for a fun colored turkey.
- Feathers can be made in advance and stored between two pieces of wax paper. You can then just roll up the sheet and store in a sealed plastic bag.
- To make the eyes, pipe a large dot of white frosting on the cookie then place a mini chocolate chip in the center.