Hedwig the Owl Almond Butter Cookies

Hedwig is one of my favourite Harry Potter characters – she is clever, loyal and beautiful! I especially love the musical theme she was given in the films. Imagine listening to this lovely sountrack while decorating your Hedwig cookies…pure bliss!

Where I live, we currently experience the change from winter to spring. The buzzards have begun flying over the hills again and the first spring flowers have returned. This has inspired me to show you this recipe now. Remember the wonderful scene in the first Harry Potter film, in which Harry release Hedwig and when she returns to the castle, spring has come. I love this scene! Here you can watch it again!

Admittedly, Hedwig is a snowy owl and my owls have brown wings. However, even snowy owls are not completely white, especially in summer. 😉 If you want to make your Hedwigs even more “snowy”, you can, of course, leave away the cocoa powder and dust the wings with powdered sugar after baking, instead.Finally, we have to talk about the taste of these cookies. It is sadly often the case that super cutely decorated sweets are not quite as tasty as they look, for instance, because incredible amounts of sugary ingredients are used to make them beautiful. This is definitely not the case with these owls. As you will see below, the owls are decorated only with chocolate, cocoa powder and almonds – and all these bits add to the owl cookies’ fabulous taste!

The cookies are buttery, crisp and the smell and taste wonderfully of almonds…oohhhhh! Sooo good! What a pity I don’t have any left! 😉Show me your Hedwigs! I would be thrilled to receive a picture of your owl cookies on Instagram (@bettythebakingprincess)!

Best wishes,
Bettina.

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Hedwig the Owl Almond Butter Cookies

preparation time: about 10 min
baking time: 8-10 min
decoration time: about 1 h
yield: about 20 owl cookies

Ingredients:

• 230g butter
• 230g white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• ½ tsp. almond extract
• 380g flour
• 1 pinch of salt
• about 40 chocolate chips
• about 20 whole almonds
• about 50g almond slivers
• cocoa powder

Preparation:

1. Combine the softened butter and sugar.
2. Then, add the egg, vanilla extract and almond extract.
3. Combine flour and salt; sieve the mixture over the butter mixture and stir to combine.
4. Refrigerate for at least ½ an hour.
5. Line one or two baking sheets with baking parchment.
6. Dust your surface with flour. Roll the dough until it is 7mm thick and cut out round shapes. Basically, you can make your owls as big or small as you wish. I chose a diameter of about 8cm.
7. Now the best part begins: It’s time to create your owls! Use reserved cookie dough to form the white parts of the eyes and chocolate chips for the brown parts. Make the beak with a whole almond, the talons with almond slivers. Use a round cookie cutter (preferably one with a larger diameter than the one you use for the owl body) to create the wings but don’t cut through the dough entirely! To create the impression of feathers, use a knife or a fork. Dust the wings with cocoa powder using a small brush.

8. Cool the cookies for at least 30 min, preferably longer (up to 1h), to help them keep their form when baking. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
9. Bake the cookies for 15-20 min, take them out of the oven and let them cool down.
10. Store them in the box, enjoy yourself or give them away as presents.

(recipe after Heather Baird from Sprinklebakes)

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To get a printed version:
Download the pdf. (Both English and German versions available!)

Hedwig the Owl Almond Butter Cookies

Hedwig Eulen Mandel-Butter-Cookies