Shortbread Owl Biscuits

Cinnamon Tree Bakery Owl Biscuits at Borough Market

I have recently become a bit obsessed with owls and as a result I see Owly things everywhere!  Last week I visited Borough Market and came across the cutest owl biscuits, they are made by The Cinnamon Tree Bakery. 

I am planning an afternoon tea for my birthday in March and decided I wanted to be able to have these gorgeous biscuits to my guests cue much googling to find out how to make them, it seems everyone has seen these cute owls at Borough Market and there are lots of pictures of them online!  I have created my own owl biscuits with a mish mash of pages I found online.  Thanks to Darcie Heater for her blog about them which helped immensely with assembly.



Here's how to make them:

I used Fiona Cairn's shortbread recipe halved which I found here.

I added 1 teaspoon of cinnamon to my dough but you can flavour it with vanilla, orange zest, lemon zest, pecans or walnuts.  I couldn't find rice flour so used corn flour.

Pre-heat your oven to 170ºC/fan 160ºC/340ºF/gas mark 31/2. Once the mixture has chilled you are ready to create your owls.

Sprinkle some flour on your work surface and gently need the dough, don't overdo it as you can make it tough.

Roll out your dough with a rolling pin, I used marzipan spacers at 5mm but if you don't have any then you can use a ruler to check the thickness of the dough.

Cut out as many big circles as you can.  I used a cutter that was 6.5 cms.  Before re-rolling the dough use a small cutter (1.5cm) to cut out 2 eyes for each big circle.  Pastry doesn't like being re-rolled so get as many cookies out of the dough you roll each time.

I made 15 owls and then made small hearts and flowers with the rest of the mixture.

Cover a baking tray with baking parchment and line your cookies up.  Gently dampen the areas where the eyes will go and push them on, then add a chocolate drop to each one point side down, push it in quite hard.  Then add 1/2 almond as the beak, again dampen the biscuit and push the nut in quite hard, you don't want it falling out.

Ready to be baked

The leftover bits

Finally with a fork indent the feet.

Bake in the oven for about 18-20 minutes until the shortbread is just beginning to brown on the edges.


Once you have taken the biscuits out of the oven sprinkle caster sugar over them.  I used golden caster sugar with cinnamon added.  Leave to cool for a good 10 minutes.

Enjoy!