Decorated Colorful Turkey Cookies with Royal Icing

Who says you need a turkey-shaped cookie cutter to make turkey cookies? In this step-by-step tutorial, you’ll learn to make colorful turkey cookies using a maple leaf and a mini snowman cookie cutter.

Decorated cookies displayed on white background.

COLORFUL TURKEY COOKIES STEP-BY-STEP

I’ll walk through how to decorate each cookie using the feathering/ marbling technique to create gorgeous, colorful feathers, plus a polka-dot feathering effect for the turkey’s cheerful head.

Two decorated turkey cookies in blue orange brown and black colors.

THINGS YOU NEED

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Maple Leaf cookie cutter
Small snowman cookie cutter, or other similar cutter, or you can make a snowman as a royal icing transfer
Gold nonpareils and/or sanding sugar
Gel Food Coloring: brown, orange, green, black, red, use different colors as you wish
Tipless Piping Bags
Scribe Tool
Edible marker – yellow or brown
Template optional – half circle template

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COOKIE CUTTERS

Before you bake the cookies, trim the bottom of the maple leaf cutter and also the very bottom of the Snowman cutter.
When we glue them together, they will create a thick bottom edge (over 1/2 inch thick). As a result, an assembled cookie can sit upright and make a beautiful centerpiece or placement cookie.
In this tutorial, I used my classic sugar cookie recipe. If you’d like, you can make a seasonal variation of my cut-out cookie recipe by adding pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon. Use about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon per batch of my classic sugar cookie dough

Maple leaf and a mini snowman cookie cutter.

ROYAL ICING COLORS AND CONSISTENCIES

I used royal icing to decorate cookies. You can use standard royal icing made with egg whites (there are 3 recipes using meringue, fresh egg whites, and pasteurized egg whites in a carton recipe), vegan icing (using aquafaba), or glaze icing.

Tan Icing: 15-second consistency (feathers, turkey head)
Orange Icing: 15-second (feathers), 20-second consistency (turkey beak, hat buckle)
Green Icing: 2015-second (feathers)
Black Icing: 15 to 20-second consistency (eyes, hat), piping consistency (hat outline)
White Icing: 15 to 20 second consistency (eye)
Red Icing: 20-second consistency to piping consistency (turkey wattle)
Dark Brown Icing: 15-second consistency (half circle on the maple shape, polka dots on turkey head)

Royal icing in piping bags beside undecorated cookies

MAKE TURKEY FEATHERS WITH ROYAL ICING

Use a yellow edible marker and a small half-circle cardstock template and trace a guide onto the cookie (steps 1-5).

Drawing guides onto the cookie with an edible marker.

Outline and flood this half-circle section with brown icing of 15-second consistency. Let the icing crust for about 20 minutes until no longer shiny (steps 1-6).

Decorating the bottom of maple leaf cookie with a half circle filled with brown royal icing.

Now we’re going to flood every other section with tan-colored royal icing-15-20-second consistency (steps 1-6).

Decorating a small part of a cookie with royal icing marbling technique.

Immediately pipe short lines across with orange and green icing – 15-second consistency (steps 1-4).
To create a feathered look, run the tip of a scribe tool or a toothpick through the middle of freshly piped royal icing and down the sides (steps 5-8).
Allow icing to crust for about 15 minutes.

Piping feathers using marbling royal icing technique onto a cookie.

If you experience heavy cratering as your royal icing dries. You can use thicker icing, like 20-second consistency icing.
And if you’re using 15-second consistency icing, try not to pile it up too much in the narrow sections, as you risk cratering.
Repeat the same technique on the remaining undecorated sections.

A cookie decorated like turkey feathers with royal icing.

OTHER WAYS TO MAKE A FEATHER BACKGROUND

Another way to make turkey feathers is to flood the entire area above the brown half-circle with 15-second icing (steps 1-3).
Then immediately, while the base layer is wet, pipe curved lines across (steps 3-5).
Run a tip of the scribe through the icing, as shown in the image, to create a feathered/marbled look (steps 6-8).
Let the icing dry.

Decorating a cookie with wet on wet feathering technique.

If you still experience cratering in royal icing, you can mitigate it with a simple decorating technique.
Pipe a zigzag line or a squiggly line in the middle of a narrow area that you’re trying to decorate (step 1).
Let this line crust, then pipe the icing over it (steps 2-8).
This zigzag line acts as a support beam. It helps prevent icing from falling and causing cratering/dimpling.
When creating individual narrow feathers, it’s important to let the adjacent sections crust to achieve dimension.
Before we can proceed to the next step, let the icing dry completely for 8 to 12 hours.

Decorating turkey feathers with royal icing of different colors orange yellow and green.

DECORATE WITH SPRINKLES & SANDING SUGAR

With piping consistency, pipe a curved line along the border of the brown half-circle with a feathered background (step 1)
Immediately dust the line of icing with gold sprinkles or use colored sanding sugar (steps 2-4).
Repeat with all the turkey cookie designs.

Adding gold sprinkles onto a piped line of royal icing.

Decorating a cookie with brown sanding sugar.

Adding brown sanding sugar on the line of piped royal icing.

TURKEY HEAD COOKIES

I’m going to show you how to decorate two turkey head designs.
1st Turkey Head Design
Ice the head with light tan icing 15 15-second consistency (steps 1-2).
Immediately pipe brown polka dots into the bottom part of the cookie (step 3)
Use the same color you used for the base (tan) and pipe another set of dots over the dark brown dots. Partially covering the dark brown dot, leaving a small crescent visible. This technique is great for simple feathered patterns, bubbles, and even fish scales (step 4).
While the icing is wet, make the eyes: pipe white dots at the very top, then pipe black dots in each white dot to make the pupils (steps 5-6).
To make the reflection, use the scribe tool to pick up a small amount of royal icing straight from the piping and place it on the edge of the black (steps 7-8).

Decorating a cookie with wet on wet polka dot feathering technique using a light brown and dark brown royal icing.

2nd Turkey Head Design
In the second design, you’re going to ice the bottom first using the polka dot feathering technique (steps 1-3).
Immediately use dark brown icing and pipe the top section, creating a zigzag line that overlaps the top of the bottom section (steps 4-5).
Pipe the eyes.

Decorating a cookie with wet on wet polka dot feather technique.

DECORATE TURKEY HAT

To make the hat, use black and green royal icing.
Make the hat band and then pipe the hat with black icing on top of the green. and then add a layer of black under the green (steps 1-8).
Let the icing crust for about an hour.

Piping a black hat with a green band onto a small snowman cookie.

TURKEY DETAILS – BEAK, WATTLE, HAT BUCKLE

Now we can add all the little details.
Pipe a small triangular beak with 20-second consistency orange icing (steps 1-4).
Let the beak crust for 5 minutes.

Pipe turkey wattle with 20 to piping consistency red icing. Start at the top of the orange beak. Pipe and S-shape down the right side (steps 1-4)
Make a hat buckle – pipe a small square or rectangle with 20-second orange icing (steps 5-8).

Piping red turkey waddle above the orange beak.

Use 20 to piping consistency black icing to outline the hat and let the icing dry completely before assembling the cookies (steps 1-6).

Outlining a black hat with black royal icing.

Two variations of turkey head cookies decorated with royal icing.

ASSEMBLE TURKEY COOKIES

To assemble cookies, pipe a small amount of icing on the back of the turkey head.
Adhere it to the feather background.
Use a gentle shifting motion.
Make sure that the bottom of the turkey head flushes with the bottom of the maple leaf.
Allow to dry for 30 minutes to an hour before packaging or storing away in an airtight container.

Two cookies, maple shaped cookie decorated with feathered royal icing technique and a small cookie in a shape of a turkey head decorated with wet on wet polka dot feather technique.

Gluing a turkey head cookie on a maple leaf feather cookie.

DISPLAY COLORFUL TURKEY COOKIES

You can display these turkey cookies flat or stand them upright for a playful 3D display.

A close up of two cookies standing upright. — Two 1/4 ich thick cookies, glued together, make a little over 1/2 inch base that makes it possible for the cookie to stand upright.

Red, tan, blue, colorful turkey cookies made with maple leaf and a snowman cookie displayed on a light colored background.

COLORFUL TURKEY COOKIES VIDEO TUTORIAL

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