Thanksgiving Mayflower Cookies

As we near closer to my favorite holiday, here's one more idea I wanted to share for the upcoming Thanksgiving festivities. Staple images like turkeys, pilgrims, and Native Americans are pretty common cookie designs around this time of the year. However, I haven't see many Mayflower cookies. I hope to change that with this post. Here are some Mayflower cookies that use the front perspective. I found the front perspective was much simpler of a design to decorate than using the side profile of the ship.

Preparing the Dough

The shape for these Mayflower cookies is just a basic snowman cookie cutter. The one I used in particular was a rather large one. It came in a set of two cutters that I found at Walmart. However, I think any similar snowman shaped cutter would work for these Mayflower cookies.

The Decorating Process

The key to making these Mayflower cookies is to approach the design in layers. You will see what I mean below.

Step 1

Begin by marking out the bottom shape of the ship's hull. I made a template out of template plastic and traced the top edge with a food marker onto the cookie.

Step 2

With light brown royal icing, outline the bottom shape and then flood the middle with thinner icing. Leave this icing to set for 15 minutes.

Step 3

With white royal icing, outline two rectangular shapes for the ship's sails, as shown below. Flood the middle with white flood icing. Leave this white icing to set for 15 minutes.

Step 4

With dark brown royal icing, pipe a line above each rectangular sail. Then outline and flood the ship's hull edge details. Leave the entire cookie to set and dry for an hour before moving on to the next step.

Step 5

Once the base layer of sails had time to dry, add two more smaller rectangular sails on top, as shown below. Leave this set of sails to set for 15 minutes.

Step 6

Again, with dark brown royal icing, pipe a line above each rectangular sail and also add a center mast. Then, with a brown food coloring marker, add wood plank detail lines on the ship's hull.

Step 7

Finally, add the final, fine details. I used ivory icing to add ropes and red icing to add a few flag details.

As an alternate to the above design, these Mayflower cookies would make great edible place setting cards. The cookie I used was fairly large, enough that there was plenty of room for a personalized name to be placed on one of the sails.

As for the red cross detail that I placed on these cookies, I'm not sure if it accurately pertains to the Mayflower. I did a quick Google search and saw a few images of the Mayflower with that symbol on its sails, so I just went with it. Whether the red cross is historically correct, I couldn't determine. It does look cool on the cookie, though.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving next week. Enjoy the food and the time off!