The Lorax cookies

I've seen The Lorax cookies like these on Pinterest and had to give them a try...I mean, cotton candy on top of decorated sugar cookies?

The thing is, they're decorated sugar cookies.  And I have a tough time gearing up to make those because they take So. Long. to make.  Start to finish these took almost five hours...so if you're thinking about making them, consider yourself warned.

I used these recipes for the sugar cookies and the icing (but no almond extract in the icing--not a fan) and the cookies spread just a little bit more than recipes I've used before.  But the taste was sweeter, so I was willing to trade off super crisp edges (especially when there would be so much going on the top of the cookies) for better flavor.

We used circle cutters for The Lorax and the Truffula treetops and this cutter for the mustaches (upside down and with a little extra cut out on the top).  I got buckets of colored cotton candy at the grocery store in the seasonal aisle with all of the Easter candy to use as the furry top of the trees and the crazy huge mustache and eyebrows of The Lorax. 

The cotton candy definitely looked pretty cool.  Light, fluffy, fun. 

My favorite picture of the night:

We had cookie sticks to use for the trunks of the trees and planned to add them in the morning to allow time for the icing to dry. 

But.

Apparently if you are going to use cotton candy on top of iced cookies, you need to either be ready to present them right away or maybe wait to add the cotton candy until then.  Because this is what the cookies looked like the next morning:

Wa-waaaaa.  Oh well, five hours hanging out with Ben chatting about various things was still a great way to spend an evening!  Not that we'll be making decorated sugar cookies again anytime soon...