Gingerbread Cookies with Confectioner's Sugar Icing

Our friend recently deployed to Iraq for a year. While he's gone, a group of us has committed to sending him care packages that represent the current season back home. We thought and thought about what we should include in the fall-themed package, and a trip through Hobby Lobby provided inspiration: gingerbread cookies in the shape of turkeys! It was obviously fated, so we snapped them up and ran home to bake.

The basis for our cookies is the Gingerbread Cookies recipe from Cooking Light's November 2009 issue. We made these for our annual Christmas party last year and they were a smash hit, so we were able to bake with confidence.

Before attempting these cookies, be aware that the dough requires an hour's worth of chillin' in the fridge. The good news, though, is that the cookies will keep for weeks in an airtight container, so you can make them several days ahead when you have time and ice them later.

We love the simple icing recipe that accompanies the cookies, but it's more for piping, and we didn't quite know how to pipe a turkey! That's why we headed over to Williams-Sonoma and snapped up a recipe for Confectioners' Sugar Icing instead.

The W-S icing requires 3 ingredients not pictured in our ingredient line-up - 1/2 stick of butter, water, and 1/2 cup of powdered sugar - and about 7 minutes to prepare (5 of which are cooling time). It results in a buttery, sugar icing that can either be drizzled or spread.

We chose the festive route and opted to drizzle the icing on our cookies, and they turned out looking very chic and modern! A tip for fellow drizzlers - lay your cookies out on a large sheet of saran wrap, leaving plenty of room on the top and bottom sides. Then, start the stream of icing before you get to the first cookie, and finish after you've reached the last one. That way, all of your cookies look perfectly uniform, with none of them looking like an obvious starting or ending point.

Our fingers are crossed that the desert heat doesn't melt these into a sticky, gooey mess! But hey, it's the thought that counts, right? And no matter how they look when they reach their destination, we know one thing's for sure: they'll still be delicious!