I’ve been working on some lion party ideas the last few days, and quite a few of the “lions” I’ve seen have looked like a circle with a flower behind them for a mane. I decided to try making some lion cookies with some of my flower cookie cutters. I got out my flower cookie cutters, and a daisy cookie cutter I had. Here’s how they turned out. I’m not a good piper, so yours would probably turn out better.
I used my favorite shortbread cookie recipe for cutting out and decorating cookies. You can find the recipe here: shortbread cookie recipe
I doubled the recipe since these are larger cookie cutters. I rolled out the dough, with plenty of flour to about 1/4″ thick. Then I cut the cookies with the flower cookie cutters, and baked them according to the recipe directions.
Decorating the Lion Cookies
While the cookies were baking and cooling I mixed up some royal icing. I used my favorite Wilton recipe.
Royal Icing Recipe
Ingredients:
1 lb sifted confectioner’s sugar
6-8 Tablesppons luke warm water
Wilton Color Flow (optional)
You’ll also need:
For the lion: Yellow food coloring
3 chocolate chips per cookie
Small tube of black decorator icing
Place the confectioner’s sugar in a small bowl, slowly add the water while mixing with a hand mixer on low or medium. Add water 1 tablespoon at a time until the icing slowly melts into itself when you stop mixing.
You can add the Wilton Color Flow to make the icing flow better, but the icing should flow fairly well even without it if you get the right consistency. Color the icing with yellow food coloring.
Use a small round decorating tip, and a pastry bag or plastic bag to pipe the icing onto the cookie. Start by making an circle outline toward the outside of the cookie, leave some cookie bare on the outside for the lion’s mane.
Once you’ve piped icing all the way to the center and filled in the circle, add 2 chocolate chips for the eyes, and one chocolate chip for the nose while the icing is still liquid.
Set the cookies aside to dry for several hours, then use black decorator icing to pipe on a mouth and some whiskers.
These would be super cute for a jungle, or lion themed birthday party!