Barney the Dinosaur Brown Sugar Cookies

The Barney theme song was an earworm for me as I iced this purple dinosaur for someone who requested for these as door gifts!

I am not a fan of Barney but kids seem to love him. You may wonder how to make cookies with non-standard shapes without suitable cutters. I made my own template by cutting out stiff plastic sheet in the shape of the cookie, and traced the outline on the dough using a small fruit knife. You may refer to my Peppa pig cookies post to have a look at how this is done. It is definitely more time consuming than using cutters but it's a versatile and cheap method. The same cookie dough handling tips apply:

- Work with chilled dough
-Place a reusable freezer pack under the dough to keep it chilled for a longer time as you cut out the shapes
-Divide the dough into 2 batches such that you will always have chilled, firm dough to work with as the other batch is being chilled in the fridge/freezer

I used my all-time favourite brown sugar cookie recipe for these Barney cookies. They are fragrant, soft and chewy, and have always received rave reviews from kids. Another wonderful thing about these cookies is they can keep for up to a month in an airtight container so I can make them way ahead of time. I iced the cookies with royal icing made from icing sugar and meringue powder, instead of a royal icing premix.

Here's a picture tutorial of how to ice Barney. I made 12 of these. It takes a bit of artistic skill as you have to do quite a bit of freehand drawing. Keep a damp paper towel handy to wipe off any mistakes before the icing starts crusting. I had to use a toothpick to paint Barney's facial features as they were too fine to pipe. This is despite making the cookies quite big (about 3.5").

I was afraid that my freehand piping was not good as Barney looked really awful halfway through piping!

*Phew* At least Barney is recognisable!

Barney with birthday message stuck on!

With love,
Phay Shing