- Hey everyone.

Welcome back to another episode of "The Baking Journal."

Today we are making these adorable little circus animal cookies.

Stick around.

(lively music) These adorable little circus animal cookies.

Don't they bring you back to your childhood?

I remember eating these when I was a kid.

Stick around and let me show you how to do it.

First, let's get our dry ingredients together.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt.

I hand grated the nutmeg.

It makes such a huge difference in this recipe because it's the only spice that's in the total recipe itself.

So it's worth your while.

Set it aside and in the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter with the sugar.

It will become super light and fluffy.

(mixer whirring) Add the egg and the vanilla and then beat on high until everything is mixed well.

(mixer whirring) Turn the mixer down on low and add the flour mixture gradually until it begins to form a dough.

Don't forget to scrape down the bowl to make sure you're getting everything combined.

(lively music) (mixer whirring) So at this point, the dough still looks a little crumbly, but it's coming together.

So now we're going to take it out and put it in plastic wrap and make our little disk.

As I wrap it in the plastic wrap, I am gently pressing the dough together.

Wrap it up and into the fridge it goes to chill.

So while our dough is chilling, we can get everything else ready.

And honestly, your dough needs to chill probably for an hour, but if you wanted to do it the day before and just leave it overnight, that's cool too.

The next steps are going to be, we're gonna preheat our oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

We're going to get our baking sheet ready and we're gonna get our cookie cutters ready.

And if you have little animals, that makes it all the more cuter.

Lightly cover the counter with flour.

And I always like to add just a little flour to the top of the dough too.

We're rolling the dough out to one fourth inch thickness, and I have a special rolling pin that is measured exactly to one fourth inch, which I think is cool.

And that way we get a nice even dough.

Once your dough is nice and evenly rolled out, you'll wanna flower your cookie cutters.

The smaller the cookie cutters, the more likely your dough will want to stick inside.

So dipping it in flour before cutting can be really helpful.

Place your cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet about a half an inch apart, and bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 12 to 15 minutes.

(lively music) Here they are.

So cute.

So while our cookies are cooling, we're gonna get ready to make the icing.

But I just wanted to tell you that I've tried several different ways of icing these cookies.

One of the ways was I tried dipping the cookies into the icing, but these are little cookies, so that was a little bit cumbersome to not get icing all over me and everything else other than the cookies.

I also have a dear friend who likes to paint individually each cookie with icing, but I don't really have the patience for that.

So the easiest thing that I found to get icing onto these cookies is a squeeze bottle.

I'm adding two tablespoons of meringue powder to two cups of confectioners' sugar.

Mix those together and add vanilla and water.

I'm starting with only a couple tablespoons of water.

I can always add more if I need it thinner.

This is the consistency that I want.

Notice how it falls off the spatula in a V shape.

That's what I'm looking for.

Last but not least, I am adding a very small amount of soft pink gel food coloring.

Remember a little goes a long way with gel food coloring.

Mix that all together, pour the icing into a squeeze bottle and begin decorating.

All I'm doing is outlining the cookie in our icing and just filling in any little holes.

I like to ice a few at a time and then put the sprinkles on because I don't want the icing to start to harden.

Then our sprinkles won't stick.

The other thing too to keep in mind is put your cooling tray where your cookies are on top of a baking sheet so it'll catch all of those errant sprinkles.

And now we just need to let these dry for about 15 minutes so that they all set up.

These are buttery.

You get that little hint of nutmeg and the sweetness from the icing, and then a little crunch from the sprinkles.

It really is a fun little project.

If you had children or anyone else that would enjoy making these together, I think it would be a really great project to do.

And they are really delicious.

So please, it helps the channel if you subscribe and give me a like, I hope you enjoyed this video, and I'll see you soon again on another "Baking Journal."

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