"Owl" Always Love You

When I showed my daughter Eleanor these "Owl" Always Love You cookies for Valentine's Day she said, "I'm going to be honest. It's sweet but it's also kind of corny."

I like corny.

The idea for these came about as I was digging for my "Bee" cutter for my recent batch of "Bee" Mine cookies. I came across the owl cutter and knew I wanted to figure out a way to incorporate it into a Valentine cookie.

I used the cutter to stamp an outline onto a plaque shaped cookie before baking so that when it came to decorate all I had to do was trace the lines.

After outlining and flooding the cookie with white royal icing and filling in the owl body with pink, I added some feather detail, big eyes and the message using medium consistency fuschia colored icing.

Here's how:

While the pink icing is still wet, add a few lines.

Use a skewer to swipe down through the lines twice on each side. Be sure to wipe your skewer off after each swipe.

Also add two black curved lines down the middle of each owl. Let the cookies dry before moving onto the next step.

Add your lettering and two white dots with a black dot dropped on top for eyes and a yellow beak. Let this dry before drawing larger icing circles around the eyes and filling them in.

Also add some squiggles to the breast of the owl. Let the cookie dry before packaging.