Owl Sugar Cookies

Winter has finally arrived in Florida. I sit typing this under layers upon layers of clothing and blankets with a space heater nearby and am still shivering. Any northerners reading this may scoff, thinking, It's Florida, how bad can it be? But for those of us who are used to complaining about heat and humidity for eight months out of the year, a low of 25 (like tonight) sends us into a state of panic.

Anyway, I digress. I was talking about winter, which means that Christmas is peeking its head around the corner, and nothing brings back fond memories of Christmas like making sugar cookies. This is fairly convenient for two reasons: first, my boyfriend has been bugging me to make him sugar cookies that are NOT VEGAN. He said, Nothing fancy, and nothing for your blog; I just want some sugar cookies. But of course if I'm going to bake something, they're going on the blog :)

The second reason this recipe came at a convenient time is because the dough must be kept very cold through the process, and since my house is hardly weather-proof, the kitchen was definitely cold enough to keep the dough chilled, thus making my life easier! It's pretty much impossible to make these cookies in a hot kitchen (i.e. an un-air conditioned kitchen in Florida during the summer).

Now, I know that owls aren't necessarily indicative of the holiday spirit, but I am somewhat of a Grinch when it comes to Yuletide joy, so forgive me.



This is an owl-in-progress shot. I used a drinking glass to cut out the bigger circles and then an old 7-Up bottle cap to make the holes for the eyes.



Make sure to reserve the eyes so you can fill in the holes of the other colored dough.



Here they are out of the oven. They come out looking a little creepy! Could possibly be decorated for a good Halloween party or even an anime thing.



Just making room on the cooling rack for the second batch.



Here's one of them finished, along with the assembly line for the others! These turned out pretty cute, with lots of decorating possibilities. They're pretty tasty, and retain their softness and moisture pretty well. Nothing like the slice and bake from Pillsbury, although quite a bit more work! But I think it's worth it. Recipe below.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour, divided
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt, divided
2/4 tsp baking powder, divided
1 cup sugar, divided
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened
1 egg
1 Tbsp milk, divided
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp coconut extract

Directions:

You will need four mixing bowls, two small and two medium, wax paper, and two different sized circles for cutting the dough, one for the cookie size and one for the eyes.

In one of the small bowls, sift together 1 1/2 cups flour, pinch of salt, and 3/8 tsp baking powder (a little less than 1/2 tsp).

In the other small bowl, sift together 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup cocoa powder, pinch of salt, and 3/8 tsp baking powder.

In one medium bowl, beat 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup sugar together until smooth. Do the same in the other medium bowl.

In a small bowl, crack the egg into it and then whisk well with fork or whisk. Pour half of the egg into each medium bowl. Then pour 1 1/2 tsp milk into each of the bowls. Into one bowl, pour the vanilla extract. Into the other, pour the coconut extract. Make sure you remember which bowl has what extract. Mix each bowl separately until contents of each bowl are well incorporated.

Pour the non-chocolate flour mixture into the bowl with the coconut extract, and mix well until a the flour mixture is incorporated. The dough will look crumbly, but will stick together when you press it together. Pour the chocolate flour mixture into the bowl with the vanilla extract, and repeat the process of mixing.

Tear off four sheets of wax paper so that they are about square shaped and lay them on the counter. Grab one of the doughs and form into a ball with your hands. Place on one wax paper square and then flatten. Put another wax paper square on top of that one. Set aside.

Do the same thing with the other dough. Place both doughs in the refrigerator for at least two hours, or overnight, to chill enough so that the dough is hard.

When you are ready to continue, pull one of the doughs out of the refrigerator and, with the wax paper still on top and below the dough, use a rolling pin to flatten the dough into about a 1/4" thick sheet of dough. Take the top wax paper off of the dough. Use your big circle cookie cutter to cut out as many circles as you can. (You may want to dip the rim of the cookie cutter in flour so it won't stick to the sides, as this dough gets very sticky when it gets warmer.) When you have gotten as many circles as you can out of that sheet of dough, roll it into a ball again, flatten, and replace the top sheet of wax paper. Roll out again and repeat the process. Repeat this until there is not enough dough to make another circle. Discard (or snack on) the leftover dough.

Put the circles of dough back on the wax paper. Now use your smaller circle cookie cutter to cut out two eyes in each of the bigger circles. You may want to flour the rim of this cookie cutter as well. I had trouble getting mine out of the bottle cap, so I used a fondue sticker to get it out. You can also use a fork prong or a toothpick to help you out with this.

Once you have cut out all the eyes, place all the circles, big and small, back onto the wax paper and put back into the fridge to keep chilled.

Then repeat with other dough.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Get out a cookie sheet and grease it, or lay down parchment paper. Grab all the circles from the fridge, and place big circles on the cookie sheet, making sure they are about an inch apart from each other and the sides of the cookie sheet. I could fit about six onto one cookie sheet at a time. Place small circles of opposite colored dough into the holes of the big circles on the cookie sheet.

Bake for about 9 to 10 minutes, or until the edges are just beginning to brown. Be sure to keep a close eye on the chocolate ones, as the browning of the edges will not be apparent. For this reason, you might want to bake chocolate ones with vanilla ones so you can tell when they're ready.

Take out of oven and let cool for about two minutes. Then transfer to cooling rack to let cool completely.

To ice these, I used some mess-up frosting from my chocolate beet cupcakes. The recipe is here

To decorate, make two angled lines above the "eyes" of the cookies. Then cover with shredded coconut. Then make two dots for eyes, and an upside down triangle for a nose. And you're done!