totoro cookies

Me and my boyfriend came home from disneyland yesterday and had started talking about how cute it would be to make some sugar cookies that kept up that feeling we got while walking around the park. At first we struggled with ideas on what we would want to make. Alice in wonderland and pirates of the Caribbean cookies are fine and all, but we wanted something that would be so cute that when you looked at it you just wanted to punch it. Anyways, we settled on some kawaii totoro cookies with umbrellas and soot sprites.


they where much more simple than I had imagened to make, but I found myself stressing over keeping my lines straight and not spreading the frosting too far. They came out okay for a first REAL designed sugar cookie attempt, but next time I will definetly do some things different.

My tips for shaping the cookies are;

• cool the dough for at least an hour before you do anything serious with it.
• Roll it out as evenly as possible. 1/8 of an inch thick is a pretty good size.
• If you arn't using parts of the dough, Refrigerate it!
• To make your own shapes, start by drawing your design on a piece of paper, then cut out that design leaving about 1/10th of an inch of space around it. On chilled flat dough, lay your design not pressing too hard, and cut out with a sharp serrated knife around it. Transfer to a baking sheet using a spatula so it doesn't loose shape. If you find your cookies are sticking and hard to transfer, roll your dough out on parchment paper instead so you can just skip the spatula part and bake.
• Smooth out doughs edges with a moist finger.
• If your designs are bigger than 4inch, check on them after 15 min of baking, then again every 5 minutes. Take out of oven just before edges start to brown, or when the dough is slightly firm to touch.
  

Here is the recipe I used for the icing and cookies.