• Remove all of the butter from the refrigerator. You will make the sugar cookies first but the butter for the frosting needs to come to room temperature before mixing.

BB8 Sugar Cookies

• Preheat the oven to 350℉ and prepare an aluminum cookie sheet by placing either parchment paper or a silicone baking mat on it.
• In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the flour and baking powder and mix together. Set this aside.
• Cube a cup of salted butter and then, in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, combine the cubed butter with the granulated sugar. Mix until creamed together well.
• To the stand mixer, add in the egg and vanilla extract and mix until combined.
• Slowly add in the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl to the stand mixer.
• Roll the dough out to 3/8" thick and use the cookie cutters to cut out the cookies. Place the cookies onto the prepared baking sheet and bake for 9-11 minutes or until the tops of the cookies no longer look wet. When baking the cookies, only bake 6-8 cookies at a time to leave proper space between each cookie to cook without spreading. Overcrowding the cookie sheet will cause spread.

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

• In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, add the room temperature salted and unsalted butter and mix on high until light and fluffy.
• Mix in the powdered sugar little by little. Add in the vanilla extract and milk about halfway through adding the sugar to help the frosting come together. Start with one tablespoon of milk and work up to three if needed, depending on the consistency you want. I like to aim for a peanut butter consistency or thinner.
• Separate the frosting into four bowls. One bowl will contain about half of the frosting, keep this bowl undyed/white. Divide the remaining half into the three remaining bowls and dye them black, orange, and gray. Place each color into an icing bag with a coupler.

How to Decorate BB8 Sugar Cookies

• Use the white buttercream with Wilton tip #5 attached to outline and fill in the BB8 cookies.
• Use your palette knife to smooth the cookies.
• Attach the Wilton tip #2 to the black frosting to pipe out what I believe are BB8's eyes. Complete this step on all of the cookies before moving to step four.
• Remove/rinse/dry the tip #2 from the black frosting and attach it to the orange icing bag. Draw some of BB8's orange details onto the cookie. You can go super realistic or just draw some of the lines/circles to get the main idea, which is what I did.
• Once you complete step four on all of the BB8 cookies, remove/rinse/dry the tip #2 and attach it to the gray frosting. Pipe in the small gray details.
• Remove the tip #5 from the white frosting and replace it with the tip #1 to pipe in the small details on BB8.