How to Make Thanksgiving Cookie Platters

For this year's fall and winter seasons new platter designs, I did something a little different.

Each new cookie platter shape can be mixed and matched to create different design combinations. In addition, a few of these cookie shapes can be repurposed for multiple occasions. In a future tutorial post, I will be showing how to reuse a few of these new cutters across different holidays.

For this tutorial, I wanted to showcase different ways you can make a Thanksgiving platter using some of the new platter shapes. I decided to airbrush a pattern onto the cookies for added dimension, but this is totally optional. Feel free to keep things simple and forgo the airbrush suggestions if you'd like to recreate these platters yourself.

Thanksgiving Platter Cookie Cutters

The cookie cutters used for this tutorial are the pilgrim hat, pumpkin pie slice, the pumpkin design, and a center circle cutter.

You can purchase cookie cutters together as a set, or as individual pieces if you would like to mix and match your own combinations.

(This is the same circle cutter used in all my platter sets, like this Snowflake set, Spiral Platter, and Floral Wreath, etc.)

There are two sizes available. When arranged as a platter, as shown in the example picture, the platter measures:

LARGE- 12 inches in diameter.

SMALL- 9 inches in diameter.

For this tutorial, I'll be decorating the large size.

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Template for the Thanksgiving Platter Cookie Set

To help with the decorating process, I made a PDF template of all of the Thanksgiving cookie platter designs.

You can download PDF cookie templates HERE.

If you have a Kopykake or Pico projector, just print it out (or pull it up on your mobile device) and you are good to go. For those without a projector, follow the suggested steps below by tracing the design onto the cookie with an edible food marker.

The Decorating Process

For the colors used for these pilgrim hats, pie slices, and pumpkin cookies, you will need the following suggested colors:

• Pumpkin royal icing (I mixed Americolor Orange with a touch of Warm Brown.)
• Yellow icing (I used Americolor Egg Yellow)
• Tan icing (I mixed equal parts Warm Brown and Americolor Ivory.)
• Blue royal icing (I mixed my favorite autumn blue color. )
• Brown medium icing (I used Americolor Chocolate Brown.)

For Airbrush colors:

• Blue (I mixed equal parts Amerimist Forest Green and Royal Blue)
• Pumpkin Orange (I mixed one drop of Amerimist Warm Brown and 5 drops of Orange.)

Step 1

For the pilgrim hat pieces, begin by filling in the hat sections as shown. Let that icing dry.

Once dry, airbrush a pattern onto that icing. I used this large polka dot stencil.

Step 2

Next, fill in the remaining white band section. Let that icing set.

Then add a square gold buckle in the middle, as shown.

Step 3

Finish the pilgrim hat cookie by adding the middle buckle detail and the white band tail, as shown.

Step 4

For the pumpkin pie pieces, begin by filling in the crust section with tan icing. Let that icing dry.

Once dry, airbrush a pattern onto that icing.

Step 5

Next, fill in the bottom pie section with orange icing. Let this icing set.

Then add a white dollop of icing to the center, as shown.

Step 6

Add the final detail of the outlined swirl to the dollop of icing.

Step 7

For the pumpkin cookies, begin by filling in the pumpkin section, as shown. Let that icing dry.

Once dry, airbrush a pattern onto that icing. I used this striped sphere stencil.

Step 8

Next, fill in the top stem section. Then add an orange outline for dimension.

Step 9

For the center circle cookie, I flooded the cookie with brown icing and let it dry completely.

Then I stenciled "Give Thanks" on top with white icing.

Video Tutorial

The steps above are summarized in this time-lapsed video I put together below.

Here's the final Thanksgiving cookie platters all assembled. To create this entire platter required 11 cookies-- 5 hats, 5 pumpkins, (or 5 pumpkin pies) and 1 center circle cookie.

This is the large, 12" version. For the tray it's on, I like to use the 12" pizza pans from Dollar Tree. They are cheap and sturdy for transporting around.

You can swap out the pie slices for pumpkins to create a different design, as shown below.

Or, you can use all the same design all the way around. In this case, I used the pumpkin pie slices.