dinosaur cookies

My cousin's son Ethan absolutely loves dinosaurs, so when he turned 3 a couple of months ago, she asked me to make dinosaur cookies for his birthday party! The party's theme colors would be blue, green, and orange, so I decided to make three different types of dino cookies in each color.

After ordering a few dino cookie cookie cutters on Amazon (this one, this one, and this set), I was all ready! I made my favorite sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), rolled it out to about 1/8 inch thick, and used my new cutters to cut out the shapes.

Here's Brontosaurus ...

and Stegasaurus ...

and of course I had to make T-Rex as well!

After baking them at 350F until golden (about 10-12 minutes), I let them cool on a rack while I made my royal icing (recipe also in my book!)

I colored my royal icing with gel-based food coloring, and then used a disposable piping bag with a small round tip to outline the dinosaurs with stiff icing. Next, I used runny icing to fill them in.

While the icing was still wet a piped little drops of a lighter shade of icing onto each dinosaur's back. This way I would have flat spots (as opposed to raised spots, in which case you would pipe the little drops after the first layer of icing had dried).

Then I let the cookies dry for several hours (or overnight).

Aren't they super duper cute?

And I just love the color combination!

 

Happy Birthday, Ethan! Hope you enjoyed your cookies!

dinosaur cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for my friend Janice, who was throwing a dinosaur-themed birthday party for her daugther's 4th birthday.  Her daughter loves strawberries, so I made strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  And in case there was anyone who didn't like (or was allergic to) strawberries, I also made chocolate cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting.

Although I had never piped dinosaurs before, I had piped duckie cupcakes for my friend Naomi's baby shower and thought it would be similar, except with an added neck, tail, and feet.  So I attempted to pipe green dinos on the strawberry cupcakes, and blue dinos on the chocolate cupcakes.

To prevent the dinos from looking like the Lock Ness Monster, I also piped yellow spikes along the dinos' backs and tail.  I thought the end result was cute, but kind of looked like dragons instead of dinosaurs!

We all had a great time at the party - the kids played and the adults got to chat and catch up.  Thanks for inviting us Janice!  Hope everyone enjoyed the cupcakes, and hope you had a happy birthday Sofia!