These adorable Panda cookies are almost too cute to eat! They take a little more work than your typical butter cookies but they are sooo worth it! The panda cookies were so cute that they were actually hard to look at before eating them!
Lil’ bun and I haven’t made shaped cookies in a while so we decided to make them over the weekend. Okay, that’s incorrect. I haven’t made shaped cookies in a while because I find them a bit tedious to make. I decided to make these though because they were too cute not to make!
Panda Cookie tips
The key to making these cookies making sure that the butter and sugar were creamed well. It’s also important to chill the dough before you bake them to reduce the spread on the cookies. This meant that our pandas didn’t end up turning out flat! Chilling cookie dough before baking to prevent spread is a good tip for all cookie bakers to live by.
Another helpful tip when making these cookies is to make sure that you divide the dough properly! Make sure you leave enough dough to make all the pandas and all the features. If you don’t portion out your dough before making them, you might end up with a few pandas with no faces or features with no face to put them on!
Have you tried making shaped cookies before? What are your tips and tricks?
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1/3 cup of sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 1/2 cup flour
- 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder
- Cream the sugar and butter together in a large bowl until fluffy. Whisk in the egg and vanilla extract until smooth.
- Mix in the flour and baking powder. A dough should form. If not, use your hands to knead the dough together to form a ball.
- Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces and add the cocoa powder to ONE of the portions. Knead until cocoa powder is combined and the dough is brown.
- Divide the 3 portions of white dough into 6 equal parts each. Roll each portion into an oval shape and gently press the middle down to form the face of the panda.
- Using the cocoa dough, shape the eyes, nose and ears of each panda. To ensure that you have enough dough, Divide the dough into 18 portions so you know how much dough you have to make the facial features. Gently press the features onto the panda. They may detach but this is alright as they will bake together in the oven.
- Once your pandas are made, put them in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes. At this time, preheat your oven to 350F
- When your cookies have chilled, remove them from the fridge and place them 1″ apart on a prepared cookie sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown on the bottom.
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