Jane Austen Cookies
Alert Janeite Vicki (Baja Janeite) sent a link to Mischief Mari’s gorgeous cookies featuring a design of Jane Austen on a teapot-shaped cookie. We noticed the mention of Jane Austen cookies for Mother’s Day and went digging, finding the classic silhouette design. These are fantastic inspiration for your Jane Austen’s Birthday party goodies! We were going to make cupcakes last year with a Jane Austen design but never got around to it…cookies might be even better. 
November 5th, 2007 at 8:14 am
LUV’d the cookies & I’d buy them in a heartbeat.
One of our local members (Pittsburgh Region) makes JA cookies for our Birthday Tea. He uses a Thanksgiving turkey cutter, but then before baking chops off the feathers and the neck so that the resulting cookie can be iced to look like JA’s face with a ruffly mob cap (the remains of the feathers, if you catch my drift).
November 5th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
ROTFLOL!!! Sorry, Allison, but guess I can’t catch your drift. Having a hard time imagining a turkey cutout morphing into a Jane silhouette. Wish you could share a photo or sketch.
November 5th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Thank you so much for the mention here!
November 6th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Um, well. Place your right hand flat on the page. Now, thusly imagine a turkey cookie cutter with a neck (your thumb) facing to the left and the standard 4 feathers (just like you used to do if you were an American child 40 yrs ago tracing turkeys from your hand pressed on the paper) pointing out diagonally to the right. In a lovely, forgiving medium of soft cookie dough.
Now, take your knife and cut off the neck of your hand/turkey neck, smoothing out the round body that faces left, around where your thumb/neck used to be. (Follow me?) This round bit will be jane’s face. Now cut of 90% of the turkey feathers (pointing off to the right) close to what now looks like a blobby circle. This ruffly line will now be the ruffly outer edges of a gathered mob cap. Basically, what you have is an almost circle (her face) topped with a ruffly edge (her cap).
Decorate the cookie with Jane facing L and her ruffly mob cap to the R.
Hope this helps; will try to get photos.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:35 am
OK, picture this: middle management executive woman engaged in serious research project involving using non-dominant left hand to trace around splayed fingers of right hand, while hunched over desk to hide said project from prying eyes of coworkers.
Thanks to my previous incarnation as a volunteer Art Mom at son’s elementary school, I am indeed familiar with the hand turkey you described. If I now squint my eyes I can almost see Jane’s outline. I imagine the frosting application is the key. Thanks for sharing this idea!