Okay, okay:  I know it’s December already….. but I hadn’t quite finished posting about Thanksgiving, yet!

Anyway, I just had to share these adorable turkey cut out cookies.

I used the Soft Sugar Cookie Recipe that I used to make the Iced Autumn Leaves, and – since I only needed 6 turkeys – I also made more leaves.  The same colors of icing worked for the turkeys, too.  :)

And since I was making these only the day before Thanksgiving, my hunt for a turkey-shaped cookie cutter was less than fruitful.  The Thanksgiving supplies in the craft stores had already been replaced with Christmas supplies.  BUT, it turned out that my aunt had a turkey cookie cutter.

The cookie cutter wasn’t deep enough for the cookie dough, but at this point I didn’t have a lot of other options.  And I didn’t feel like cutting out a template or anything crazy like that.  So I pressed the cookie cutter into the surface of the dough to make an outline {see the photos below}, and finished cutting out the cookies with a small paring knife.

Luckily I was only planning on making six.

The rest of the dough became leaves.  Which I also decorated like I did for the Soft Sugar Cookie recipe I linked to above.

For the turkeys, after cooling the finished cookie completely, I outlined a body shape with brown icing, then filled it in, smoothing slightly with a small angled spatula.  Then I outlined tail feathers in red, orange, and yellow, one color at a time, filling them in and allowing them to sit for a minute before adding the next color.

Finally, I added the names of all the kids that were going to be there on Thanksgiving with the yellow icing.  And when everything was dry, I stacked the turkeys on top of the colorful leaves on the serving platter.  They would be amazing as edible Thanksgiving place cards, but we were eating at my cousin’s house, so everything went on one big plate.

If I had time to order the cookie cutter online instead of needlessly store-hopping, I probably would have gotten the R&M Gobbler Turkey Cookie Cutter:

These would have made my life a lot easier by eliminating the step where I had to cut out each cookie individually with a knife.

And the edges would have been a lot cleaner, too.

Oh, well.  Next year.  And – of course – they still tasted awesome.  :)