Raccoon Cookies

I love these raccoon cookies — They are cute, require just four colors of royal icing and the decorating is done all in one shot,  using the wet on wet technique of adding your icings one right after the other.  A beginning cookie decorator could easily tackle this design.

Another bonus is that because there are no fragile, sticking up parts on them, they are an ideal cookie for packaging and even shipping. These raccoons are currently en route, across the country, to the East Coast.  Here's how I made them:

The white cutter is my raccoon cutter. My husband found it for me online.

I traced my cutter onto a piece of paper, sketched out different designs and got a plan together.

I cut the mask shape that I wanted for my raccoons, out of of a piece of copy paper and traced it onto all of the cookies using an edible marker.

This guideline will be a big help when I add my icings and also keep the design uniform on all of the cookies.

Using the same edible marker, I also drew on where I wanted the eyes to be placed. I did this freehand. Now it's time for the decorating: Get your grey, white, black and blue icings mixed and ready to go. You want them all to be flood consistency.  Place the grey and white icings in bags fitted with #2 pastry tips. You need the most of these colors. Place the black and blue icings in a bags fitted with a #1 tip. You need a smaller amount of black and a very small amount of blue which will just be used for the eyes.

Working on just one cookie at a time, outline and fill the top portion of the raccoon with the grey icing.

Use a skewer or scribe tool to help evenly distribute it and give the cookie a gentle shake to help the icing settle.

Immediately add the white icing to the mask portion of the raccoon, keeping the eye areas open.

Use your scribe tool or a skewer to pull the white icing into the grey, creating the look of hair. Periodically wipe your tool off and try to work outward so that you don't muck up the white area with too much grey. You want the white to flow outward into the grey.

It will look like this.

Fill in the eye areas with black icing.

Use your scribe tool again to pull the black icing into the white.

Next, outline and fill the ears with white icing.

Use your scribe tool to pull some of the grey icing into the white ear.

Pipe a grey arch around each ear.

Add a dot of white for the eye.

Drop a dot of blue icing onto the white eye and then immediately add a touch of black by dipping your scribe into a bit of black icing and lightly touching it on top of the blue.

Finally, add a drop of black for the nose. I used my scribe tool to pull it outwards to give it an oval shape. Now it's time to move onto the next cookie.

Let your cookies dry completely before serving or packaging. Enjoy!