Get started with the dough and have your ingredients at room temperature for a perfectly smooth consistency. Most recipes call for chilling the dough before rolling it out, but we will delay this step until we’ve formed our precious cut-outs.

Cream the butter and sugar until well combined. Beat in one egg and add vanilla, baking powder, and salt. Add flour in ½ cup increments to avoid a kitchen-dust-storm (I’m very impatient and do this every time!).

Once your dough is complete, generously flour your working surface and roll out your cookie dough to ¼ inch thick. Use a conventional Christmas angel cookie cutter to create your initial cut out, then transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Now it’s time for the dramatic battle scene, take your lightsaber (or a butter knife will do) and chop off the angel’s head and smooth the edges to form a mound (the top of Yoda’s head).

The essential next step is to freeze your cookie dough for at least 15 minutes. That’s right FREEZE it. This will help the dough keep its well-defined shape in the oven. Pop it into the oven at 350 degrees and bake for 10 minutes. It might help to rotate the tray halfway through to ensure you get an even bake.

While the cookies bake, you can get started on the frosting options. Although not essential, I added a buttercream frosting base  because I love the flavor it brings to each bite. Once the Baby Yoda cookies are cooled out of the oven, I gave each a thin base layer of buttercream to build my canvas.

Next comes the Royal Icing, a surprisingly versatile frosting. Beat the powdered sugar, water, and meringue powder on medium-high speed for about 3 minutes when stiff peaks start to form. Add the first 6 tablespoons of water to get your piping icing ready.

I recommend setting aside a ¼ cup of the piping icing for each major color you plan to outline on your cookie. Place the piping icing into a plastic sandwich bag that you can ultimately add colors to and pipe from.

Now comes the tricky part: finding the right consistency for the flooding icing so it will fill in your Yoda cookie with a flat matte finish. Add a ½ tablespoon of water at a time (mine took 5 tablespoons total) until you can draw a figure 8 in the frosting with a knife that takes exactly 8 seconds to disappear back into the frosting.

Once your desired consistency is reached, partition the frosting into plastic sandwich bags and create your Yoda-green and space towel-brown colors with a gel coloring pack. Create a single bag with 1 tablespoon of flooding icing to make cute black eyes and keep at least a teaspoon of white flooding icing for the detailed specks on the eyes.

Start with the piping the outline of your Baby Yoda, which will likely set in about 5 to 10 minutes. By the time you’ve outlined your Yodas, you’ll be ready to fill them in with the color flood icing to match. The flood icing may take longer to set.

Once you’ve filled out the head and body of the cookie, you can return to complete the finishing touches. Using the small bag of black icing drop a small dot for each eye. It should spread slightly, so make start small and add more if needed. Finish off each eye with a few tiny white specks placed with a toothpick dipped back into the original white frosting bowl.