Patterned Kitty Cookies

Recipe
 by Sarah Phillips; Food styling and photos by Kelly Hong © 6-23-2015 Sarah Phillips CraftyBaking.com

INGREDIENTS 
1 recipe vanilla dough: Sarah’s Creative Cut-out Sugar Cookies; set in the refrigerator to chill

1 recipe chocolate dough: Creative Cut Out Chocolate Sugar Cookies, with 4 drops black gel paste food coloring added to the dough, instructions follow

Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Baking Melts (best), or “dark cocoa” candy melt disks.

M&Ms for the eyes, whatever color you like

Semisweet morsels (chocolate chips) for the noses

Cat head cookie cutter, about 3.5-inches across. 
The one I used came with a Halloween cookie cutter set, but you can find similar ones like these: Example one and two

Black edible ink marker

NOTES 
Make the Creative Cut Out Chocolate Sugar Cookie dough into chocolate/black dough, with the following change:

After Step 4, add 4 drops of black gel paste food coloring and beat it into the butter/sugar/egg mixture until it is well combined, then continue with the original recipe, adding the dry ingredients to the dough.

Wrap the chocolate/black dough in plastic and place it in the refrigerator with the vanilla dough and chill for at least two hours.

INSTRUCTIONS
STEP I: MAKE THE COOKIE DOUGH PATTERNS
PATTERN #1
1. When both doughs have thoroughly chilled, take the vanilla dough out and cut off 1/2 of the dough, place the rest back in the refrigerator.

Roll the dough out, on a VERY lightly floured silpat mat to about 1/4-inch thick.
NOTE: When the dough is cold, it is helpful to press it with the rolling pin, before you start rolling.

2. Remove about 1/2 cup of the chocolate/black dough and place irregularly shaped spot all over the surface of the dough, then press them down with your finger to adhere them to the vanilla dough.

3. Using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll over the dough to flatten black dots.
Continue rolling the dough until it is slightly thicker than 1/8-inch.

4. I decided to add another little central spot of vanilla dough to the center of the black spots, to add more visual interest to the pattern.
Press down the dough gently, then lightly roll over the dough with a floured rolling pin.

5. After the pattern is made, slide the silpat mat onto the back of a baking sheet and place it into the refrigerator to chill, for at least 15 minutes.

PATTERN #2:
1. While the first pattern was chilling, I made another one, starting with the chocolate dough.
The technique is the same, but this time I rolled snakes of vanilla dough and made random squiggles and dots.
After the final roll, put the silpat on the back of a baking sheet, and chill the rolled-out dough.

STEP II: PREHEAT THE OVEN. PREPARE THE KITTY NOSES.  
1. While the dough is chilling, position the oven shelf to the middle of the oven. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Before baking, prepare the kitty noses with the chocolate chips by trimming a little bit off one side, leaving a flat surface. This will be the BACK of the cat nose.

Gather together the baking melts and M&Ms so you have them ready to go when the cookies come out of the oven.

3. Pull one silpat of rolled dough out at a time, and place it on your work surface.
Cut out your cookies, leave as little scrap as possible.

4. Lift up the cold cookies with a spatula and place them on a silpat or parchment lined baking sheet, about 1-inch apart. The dough does not spread much, when baked.
 

STEP III: BAKE THE COOKIES. FINISH THE KITTY COOKIES. WHAT TO DO WITH THE COOKIE DOUGH SCRAPS.
1. Bake for 10-11 minutes, or until the edges JUST start to take on color. 

2. When the first tray of cookies comes out of the oven, you need to work fast.
Immediately remove the cookies from the first baking sheet to a cooling rack and place a one baking melt on each cookie, as pictured below.
The residual heat from the cookies with slightly melt the chocolate, so it adheres to the cookie.

3. After all the snouts are in place, wait about 1 minute, then come back to the first cookie and  set the chocolate morsel nose in place, as pictured below.
Gently press it into the slightly melted chocolate snout, pointed end down.
Repeat with the rest of the tray of cookies.


4. At this point, the cookies will still be warm, so gently press two M&Ms into the cookies to make a slight depression for the eyes, then remove the 2 M&Ms
Repeat with the rest of the tray of cookies.

5. At this point, let the cookies continue to cool.
You can then cut out another tray of cookies and bake them, then repeat the steps above, with the second tray.

What to do with the cookie scraps?:
As you are cutting the cookies, you will have scraps. DO NOT WASTE THEM!

1. Just gather the scraps together, press them down, but DO NOT knead the dough together.

2. Roll the scraps out, then add some more of the contrasting color dough to make a new pattern.
As before, press the dough into the base color and roll over to flatten.
Chill the dough for about 15 minutes, then cut out the cookies and bake.

3. When all the cookies have been baked and have the snouts and noses in place, you can add the eyes.

Just melt a little chocolate and put a little dab on the M-side of an M&M.

Set them in place, in the two depressions you made earlier.

Continue until all of your kitties have eyes.
Set the cookies aside for at least a 1/2 hour so the chocolate “glue” can set.

4. Use a black edible ink marker to draw on the pupils of the cats.
It is fun to make them looking in all directions, even cross-eyed. :^)

5. To make Siamese cats, just use the vanilla dough, the use some melted chocolate and a small offset spatula to paint on the little brown ears.