Learn to Think OUtside of the Box, Er, Cookie Cutter

You don't need to buy a cookie cutter for every cookie you want to make.  Learn to think outside of the cookie cutter and you may just find that you can make all sorts of designs your cutters were never intended for! 

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.  When life gives you a paw cookie cutter, you make a turkey!  

I Make Lots of Cookies

I know there aren't a lot of ways to really express what I mean, so I'm just going to use a picture, then I'm not going to say another word. 

We have a giant cookie party for our neighborhood each year (or we did, pre-COVID...2020 is in the works for something very different looking). 

BUT.  THERE WILL BE COOKIES.

I have hundreds of cookie cutters, but I don't use hundreds of cookie cutters.  I come back to a few shapes over and over again.  I have trained myself to try to think outside the cookie cutter design that was implied, and see what else might work.

A Word About Royal Icing

There is often reference to “piping consistency” and “flood consistency”. I have used those terms before in some of my own tutorials. BUT there are plenty of designs that don’t require the use of both. And for those, I split the difference! 

My icing consistency is neither flood nor piping, it’s 15 second icing. If you want a GREAT royal icing tutorial, here is one of my favorites…https://www.sweetsugarbelle.com/2012/03/consistency-is-key-twenty-second-icing-and-more/

I almost exclusively use the 15 second icing, as you may have also noticed if you caught my other recent Fall cookie adventure: https://amandatoryactivity.com/owl-sugar-cookie-tutorial/

Paw Cookie into Turkey Cookie

I have a video tutorial for you below, so you can see the turkey design emerge from beyond the paw.  It's not necessarily the most tutorial-like of my videos, but I think it's entertaining.

It's also only 6 minutes long, and I recognize the appeal.  I do.  There are only so many hour long Cricut videos you can watch before you need a breather. 🙂

I started by sketching out the basic turkey shapes onto the paw cookie with an edible marker.

Then I added some feathers, making sure to work on every other feather, so the shapes don't morphe into one another.  

I let them dry for 15 minutes in between decorating, so the shapes stay nice and separate.

Then added final details, and boom!

Do you see it?  Can you think outside of the cookie cutter too?  I think you can...

High Speed Video of Paw to Turkey Transformation

I have linked my YouTube video tutorial below.  I hope you find it helpful and/or entertaining.

I you try thinking outside of the cutter and come up with a creative cookie design, drop me a note, I'd love to see !

Materials used for this project are listed below.  Some links are affiliate links, and if you make a purchase through one of these links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.  If you do, thank you in advance for your support of this blog.

Large paw cookie cutter: https://amzn.to/35U8d29 

Icing colors used are Americolor gel colors. https://amzn.to/3oEcTQS 

Food color markers: https://amzn.to/3p0OBAS 

Tipless piping bags are from Truly Mad Plastics https://trulymadplastics.com/ 

Need a scribe tool? https://amzn.to/3mJQYpF

Love,
Amanda