monkey and elephant cookies

After I made these caterpillar cookies for my friend Nancy's daughter's first birthday party, our friend Cindy K. got a chance to see and taste the cookies, and then asked me to make cookies for her daughter Reese's birthday as well! If you know Reese, she is quite the monkey, always climbing up on couches, counters, window sills, you name it! So it seemed only natural for Cindy to be throwing a monkey-themed party! She asked for monkey and elephant cookies, and luckily I already had these Wilton cutters which were perfect!

After baking up 2 batches of my buttery sugar cookies (recipe in my new book!), I whipped up a batch of royal icing (recipe also in the book!), divided it, and colored it. First up were the monkey cookies. I used brown stiff royal icing to outline the face and the ears. Then I used brown runny icing to fill them in.

After letting them dry for several hours (overnight), I used tan stiff icing to pipe an oval outline on the monkey's face, and then filled it in with tan runny icing. Then I used pink runny icing to fill in the ears. Once the tan icing had dried for several hours, I used black stiff icing to pipe the eyes, nose, and mouth. Cute!

For the elephant cookies, I started with stiff gray icing to pipe the elephant outline, as well as the outline of the inner ear, before filling it in with runny gray icing.

Once the icing had dried (overnight), I used runny pink icing to fill in the ears, and black stiff icing to pipe the eyes, nostrils, and smile. Super cute!

Once the cookies had all dried completely, I wrapped each one in a cellophane bag tied with raffia. Then I boxed them up with fat bubble wrap, and sent them on their way to Cindy!

Happy Birthday, Reese! Hope you had an awesome day, you little monkey! :)