Turtle Icebox Cookies

Here's the last in this series of animal cookies: turtle icebox cookies. The shaping starts off like the lion, but then a few more extra parts added. And, there's actually a little story behind these cookies.

Way back in elementary school, my friends and I used to exchange little notes, written in glittery Gelly Roll pen on cute Sanrio stationery. (Remember the days of gel pen collections?) Anyway, each of us in the group had our own "signature" cartoon characters that we would draw on our letters. There were monkeys, cats, dolphins, dinosaurs, and, of course, my turtles. I didn't choose to draw turtles because I particularly liked turtles (because honestly, non-cartoon turtles aren't all that cute... sorry turtle lovers).

The main reason was that I wasn't very good at drawing cartoons (even now, ask me to draw a realistic portrait and I can do it, but tell me to draw some sort of anime character and I'm like @_@). But, I found cartoon turtles relatively easy to draw, just a bunch of circles, dots, and lines. Which, more importantly, means that they adapt to icebox cookie form very well. So I took my old turtle, spruced it up a little, and turned it into a cookie :).

Turtle Icebox Cookies

icebox cookie dough (with modifications listed below)
2 tbsp matcha powder
black nonpareils

Make the vanilla icebox cookie dough until it says STOP (for modifications). Split the mixture that you have so far in thirds and set aside for now. Get two separate bowls. To one bowl, add 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp flour and 2 tbsp matcha powder. Mix thoroughly.

Add one third of the previously split mixture and mix until you get a dough. To the other bowl, add 1 1/2 cups flour. Add the remaining two thirds of the previously split mixture and mix. Now you should have one matcha cookie dough and one vanilla cookie dough.

Split the vanilla dough in half. Place half of the vanilla dough on a piece of plastic wrap. Roll it so it forms a log with a 1 1/4" diameter. Sandwich the matcha dough between two sheets of plastic wrap. Use a rolling pin to roll it out to a rectangle as long as the vanilla log and wide enough to fully wrap around it (it'll be about 1/4" thick). Wrap the matcha dough around the vanilla dough log. Use your fingers to smooth out the crease formed. Cover the entire log in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Once the dough is firm, remove from the refrigerator. Slice 1/4" thick slices from the dough log and place the cookies onto the baking sheets. Take the other half of the vanilla dough, sandwich it between plastic wrap, and roll it out to 1" thick. Use a round 1" cookie cutter to cut out circles from the dough.

Take the cookie cutter and cut off part of the circle to form crescent shapes for the turtle heads. Use a big straw (like the ones for pearl milk tea) to cut out small circles. Use a knife to cut each circle in half. Now take 1 log slice, 1 crescent, and 5 small semicircles (4 for the feet and 1 for the tail) and stick them together to form a turtle.

Preheat oven to 325°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Pinch the tail semicircles so it looks triangular. Add two black sprinkles on the crescent for the eyes. Repeat for the other log slices. Chill cookie turtles for 10 minutes. Place in the oven to bake for 12-15 minutes. Let cool on the baking sheets for 3 minutes, then move the cookies to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Decorating Turtle Cookies

semisweet chocolate

Melt the chocolate. Place it in a piping bag. Pipe two vertical lines on the shell. Then, pipe two horizontal lines on the shell perpendicular to the vertical lines.