Kentucky Derby Cookies

Run For The Roses

The Kentucky Derby always makes me think of my grandmother. She loves horses and the races, and she will love these fun cookies.

Every year when the Derby comes around it reminds me of the days when my sister and I were young and my grandparents bought us ponies. What kid doesn’t want a pony?

Those were some of the best days of our lives and some of the best lessons I ever learned.

Today, I wanted fun cookies that would just make everybody smile!

Believe it or not, I do not have a horse head cookie cutter, so I drew a pattern on parchment and cut out a template. Then I laid it on top of the dough and cut it carefully with a knife. More time consuming, but it gets the job done.

After I baked the cookie and let it cool, I piped and flooded the nose with black and white icing.

Then I piped an outline in chocolate brown with a #2 tip. Next I just flooded in the area and the cookie started to look like a horse.

Shaking the cookie while the icing is wet will help to settle the icing and make it look more even.

Next came the fun part, which was adding the details. This is where your cookie gets its personality.

I like to use candies when creating a cookie and most of the time it makes the job easier. These candy dots made the perfect eyes for our horse. 

You can also make these yourself with parchment and royal icing. (I will show you how in another post) Don’t you remember the small dot strips from when you were a kid? To be honest, I still love them today.

To make the eye and give it dimension I first piped a dollop of white icing and then placed one of the candy dots into the wet icing. Next, I just added a tiny dot of black for the pupil and some black hair for the mane. 

Lastly, to make an eyelid I added some more brown to the upper half of the eye. For the girl, I used a #1 tip to make thin black lines for her eyelashes.

I then added one final detail to distinguish the boy from the girl. I gave the boy a bridle and the girl got the roses. The bridle was piped with a #2 tip and yellow icing. The roses were just mounds of red icing and sprinkled with red sanding sugar.

In order to present them the way I wanted, I filled an oval platter with green sanding sugar, placed the cookies on top and then added red candy roses to complete the display.

Hold your horses, because I also made these full bodied horses that were easy and fun to make.

I hope everybody enjoys their Derby Day!