bison cookies (chocolate sugar cookies)

I am ridiculously excited to share these cookies with you all.  They are bison!!!  And they're hilarious.  Totally a man cookie.  So make these for your man friends and I guarantee they'll be pretty stoked (mine definitely were).

I made these bad boys as a snack for my mini Grey Cup party (that's like the Superbowl for Canadian football in case you're confused) I hosted a million years ago in November right before Christmas took over the blog.  Ha!  One of my friends has a dream to own a bison ranch when he "grows up", so I knew these would be perfect to make!

Jordyn and I debated doing gingerbread for the cookie base, but eventually decided that we wanted something a little simpler.  I decided that chocolate shortbread might be the way to go, however, recipe after recipe called for several hours of chilling the dough, and that just wasn't cool with my timeline.  So, we decided to just try something new!  Jordyn adapted our favorite sugar cookie recipe, and it turned out beautifully.
 

Chocolate Sugar Cookies
by: Jordyn Siemens

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter (room temperature)

3/4 cup sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1 Tbsp milk

1 3/4 cups flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder
 

Directions

1) In a small bowl, cream butter - add sugar, vanilla, egg and milk; beat hard.

2) Add flour, cocoa powder and baking powder to cream mixture and beat again.

3) Roll onto a floured counter, approximately 1/2" thick, and cut into shapes.

4) Bake at 400 degrees F for 5-6 minutes.
 

Decorating

Icing (either soft butter cream or royal icing)

Chocolate sprinkles

Black icing (we bought a tube from Michaels)
 

1)  I used royal icing to outline where I wanted the bison's fur to be, leaving out the shape of the horn to fill in later.

2) Then I pressed chocolate sprinkles into the icing, and shook off any excess.

3)  Once the icing had set, I added in a small horn with white icing, as well as a black dot for eyes and black hooves.

*next time I'll use chocolate icing so that you can't see the white through the chocolate sprinkles.

I love how well these turned out, and am pretty stoked to have a new, no-fuss chocolate sugar cookie recipe.  It'll be great for more animal cookies that are sure to happen in the future!

- kelsey