Sophie Doll Cookies - Paper Doll Princess Cookie and Fondant Dress Up Tutorial

Yup these are cookie dolls that you get to dress up with fondant clothes like paper dolls - for Real!

When I was a little girl I used to love paperdoll dress ups, they were so much fun all the incy little paper doll clothes and the pretty little dolls. So when I had my 2 girls I of course bought them some. Suddenly I did not love them so much. All those incredibly cute little paper doll bits of clothing  were all over the house, and as the girls (plus my little destroyer as well) both love craft it was really hard to tell what were bits of scrap and what was precious little bits of doll clothing.

Dessert Table Tag from Polkadot Prints

So I came up with a yummy solution. Edible sugar cookie dolls with hand cut fondant dress ups you can stick on with icing. It's perfect the kids won't be leaving bits and pieces all around the place 'cause it'll all be in their tummy.

Photo by Terri Vandermeer dress by Chicoco

I made these super cute cookies up to look like my daughter Sophie (well kinda) to serve at her Birthday Party, it was part of the party activites, all the kids got to decorate a couple and then take them home as treats.

Photo by Terri Vandermeer

I'm calling it a huge hit.

Photo by Terri Vandermeer

Some of you might be wondering what's going on with the whole Princess titile. I know that there are no actual princess crowns on these dolls, the princess in the cookie name comes from Princess Ratbag a clothing designer/shop who styled a photo shoot that inspired Sophie's party and these cookies. Click here to check out the photo inspiration.

Photo by Terri Vandermeer

If you want to make actual princess paperdoll cookies go ahead and make some little tiara's as well, or you could pipe them directly onto the cookies.

The recipes I used for these cookies and the royal icing are from my book Sweets on a Stick: over 150 kid friendly recipes presently available for pre-order at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, The Book Depository (UK- free postage worldwide) and Fishpond (free postage Aust/NZ).....and many other stores.



There are quite a few cookie decorating ideas in the book that you could do with your kids that are way less detailed and way easier than this but just as fun. Remember the book is kid friendly so the stuff in the book will be stuff the kids can actually make themselves not this stylized and difficult.

Square footed bon bon dish available from Sharnel Dollar Designs

Sophie Doll - Paper Doll Dress Up Cookie Tutorial 
The paper doll template was custom designed by Karen McCubbin she'll be popping up an etsy store soon but in the meantime if you need to contact her you can email the Bubble and Sweet hotmail address.

Or you know - you can just make your own :)

Ingredients and equipment

cookie dough (I used the recipe from Sweets on a Stick but I also have another one here)
Doll template
royal icing
Food Color (Wilton Pink (Rose Clair), sky blue, white; Americolor Copper (fleshtone); Sugarflair dark brown)
Dusting Powder pink
Black edible pen
Rolling Pin large wooden
Piping bag and tips (#2)
Sharp Knife
Brushes (4 different)

Make cookie dough and roll out quite thinly on a workbench dusted with cornflour, about 1/2cm. Place the template onto the dough and using a sharpe knife cut around the template carefully. Remove all the excess dough and if necessary smooth the edges of the cookie dough doll. Place the cookie cut out doll onto a parchment/baking paper lined tray. Bake until golden and allow to cool.

Using the doll template cut out the hair and draw around where you will be piping the hairline with an edible pen (or other non toxic drawing implement) as per picture, also draw on the underwear and the shoes.

Mix up a batch of royal icing and color some skin tone, some white (I add white color to the already white icing as it makes a difference) and some brown. Place the royal icing into piping bags ensuring that you keep the tips covered so they do not dry out and clog up. Check out Sweetopia for piping tips.

Pipe the brown hair on each doll and flood and the pipe the underwear and shoes and flood. Allow to dry and then pipe on the skin. Leave dolls to set for at least 24 hours.

Using an edible pen draw on the face outline features. Practice with a normal pen on some paper until you get the hang of it. Once the faces are complete draw in a belly button and lines at the knees.

On a plate place a few drops of white food color, some pink and some sky blue. Mix the pink and blue with some extra white until you have a nice bright color suitable for painting eyes and lips.

 Using 000 or 00 paintbrush carefully fill in the face you have drawn by painting the eyes and lips with the food color.

Allow to dry and store in airtight containers until ready to use.

I made my cookies 1 week before the party which gave me a couple of days to decorate with royal icing. If you make sure everything is really clean they should easily last this long in airtight containers (or even longer).

Fondant Dress Up Clothes

Ingredients and Equipment
ready to roll fondant (I used Bakels)

Food Color(Wilton sky blue, moss green; Americolor electric purple; Sugarflair dusky pink/wine)
Clothing Template
Rolling pin - small plastic
Frilling tool (I used this one click here)
sharpe knife
brush and small bowl water
Piping bag and tips (#2) with a little royal icing

Before I start I wrote down approximately how many of each type of clothing in each color that I wanted to make. This should be a guide to how much fondant in each color you will need.

Color fondant with the colors until you have achieved the desired color. The light pink and darker burgandy are the same food color just using more for the darker color, that is the same for most of the colors.

Use the templates to cut out the clothing and the filling tool to add texture, place on a tray lined with parchment paper and allow to air dry for a day or until stiff.  Here are some examples of the clothing I made.

Simple top, cut out shape and use the large edge of the frilling tool on the sleeves to look like ruffles. Embelish with flowers (see below) or make a necklace of royal icing dots by gently touching the piping bag to the fondant and leaving a really tiny dot of the icing there. My icing was not stiff it was flood consistency, if your icing is stiff and peaky you can moisten your finger with a little water and gently smooth down the point. I always do a couple of practice runs on the bench or some spare parchment/baking paper first.

Pettiskirt, cut out 2 skirt shapes and trim one to make it shorter. Use the thinner edge of the frilling tool to make ruffled skirt by gently rolling it back and forth.

Adhere the shorter skirt to the longer skirt with a tiny amount of water and using the thin edge of the frilling tool to lift the skirt up in sections and make it look fuller.

Shorts cut out shape using template, place a contrast color onto the very edge of the short and then use the large edge of the frilling tool to make 'ruffles' on the short legs. Leggings were made the same way.

Dress cut out the shape using the template and using the thin edge of the ruffle tool roll back and forth to make the skirt look fuller. Cut out a smaller skirt in a contrasting color using the template and ruffle with the ruffling tool. Adhere the shorter skirt to the dress with a little water. Decorate the 'top' of the dress with some flowers or royal icing dots.

'Fabric' flowers - roll the fondant into a very thin log working quickly and use the end of the ruffle tool to start off a coil, continue to wrap the fondant around until you have a small flower shape, quickly press and edible silver ball in the center. If you work quickly you will not need anything else to stick the ball. If necessary use a little royal icing in the center of the flower to adhere the silver ball.

Assembly

Use Royal Icing to adhere the fondant dress-ups to the cookies and have stacks of Fun!

Tiffany cookies for Polkadot Prints Cocktails at Tiffany's party range

A pretty plate full of cookies I made up for the Polkadot Prints new release photo shoot taken by Naomi V Photography.

These ones are Tiffany inspired perhaps for a stylish cocktail party. Or maybe an elegant afternoon tea seeings as I whipped up a batch of Tiffany blue macarons to match as well.

If you are interested in whipping up some of these elegant cookies to match your invites here are some basic steps. The blue cookies are covered in fondant coloured with Wilton Sky Blue gel, embossed with a patchwork cutter, sprayed with PME luster spray (blue pearl) and the topped royal icing dots. They would still look good without the blue luster spray, I just had it handy.

The white cookies are covered in white fondant embossed with the same patchwork cutter and then royal icing dots piped around the edge with a powder blue edible pearl every 2nd dot.

People like to use the embossers different ways, some people put the fondant onto the cookie (or cupcake or whatever treat) and then emboss, in this instance I embossed the fondant, used my square cutter to cut out the square fondant shape and then adhered it to the cookie - try each way and which ever works for you is the best/right way for you.

Helpful links to other sites, recipes and equipment

Polkadot PrintsBlog
Polkadot Prints shop
Naomi V Photography
sugar cookie recipe
chocolate sugar cookies recipe
the patchwork cutter I used:

Powder Blue Pearls

and I think that Jordan from Polkadot Prints is teasing me. I made one other set of cookies for her range that I can't wait to show off. It's a new cookie design based on one of my most popular ever cookies, so I bet you can all guess just what it is.

Cookie Crush Wednesday Ecrandal cookie cutters, Sweetopia and Alicia from Pintrest

OK - I'm not all about the cookies. I love other stuff, you know cake pops, macarons, brownies, peanut butter brownies. Sweets on a stick - for sure.

but at the moment I do have a bit of a thing for cookies. So I thought I would share some of the things I'm cookie crushing on.

First up is cookie cutter store Ecrandal in the US who make beautiful cookie cutters, and wait for it.....they do custom made ones too. In fact they have just done up some for me based on the mask cookies in the above picture so I wont need a template and knife to handcut those babies anymore. That equals complete cookie awesomeness in my books.

Also they do custom baby hand cookie cutters where you send in a drawing of your baby's hand and they make up a cutter.

Honestly have you heard of anything sweeter (pun totally intended). Imagine precious little hand made keepsake cookie cutters which make it so you actually CAN nibble on your sweetest little ones hands.

They are not the cheapest cutters around as you would expect but sometimes I like to splurge. If you pop over check out their bird and birdcage cutters which I adore.



Next up is one of my very first ever cookie crushes Sweetopia who for many years has been the prettiest and loveliest cookie site in the whole wide web world.

Look at this picture from Sweetopia ah-mazing! Honestly who makes cookies this cute.

They have a number of fail proof recipes and instructions on how to make beautiful royal icing cookies and I'm just going to have to say again how pretty it all is. When I grow up I totally want a website that looks like Sweetopia.

Finally I'm going to point you to someone I found on Pintrest who has the most uncanny ability to locate gorgeous cookies (and cakes). Alicia has curated a cookie Pinfest and this is one board I love to follow.

If your not sure what Pintrest is, it's a kinda online scrapbook for everything not just cookies and you get to peek into everyone else's stuff. It's kinda Pindictive (addictive not vindictive) at first as there is just so much loveliness to behold in the world.

I'm not sure how Alicia finds all these gorgeous cookies I'm just happy that she finds ones like this

Source: adozeneggs.com via Alicia on Pinterest

 cookie by a Dozen Eggs Bake Shop

and these....

Source: flickr.com via Alicia on Pinterest

 cookie by sweetapolita

and so many more you'll have to pop over there and have look yourself.

If you have any cookie crushes yourself, don't keep them to yourself please share. I am going to post some more soon and I would love to hear what your cookie crushing on at the moment either here on the comments or at BubbleandSweet(at)hotmail(dot)com - you know the drill just replace the (at) with an @ and the (dot) with an actual dot.

Party Bunting Sugar Cookies

I'm recovering from a little bit of surgery at the moment and I'm pretty sure there will be no baking around here for about a week, also very little sitting in front of the computer or taking photo's.

So I've had a quick search through some of my photo's to see if there was anything worthwhile and found these pretty and simple bunting cookies I made back in February for a magazine photo shoot. They didn't end up using these ones, they took the flashy lollipop cookies instead, but I kinda preferred these ones with their simple shapes and white background.

After I found these I noticed my previous post with the cherry cookies were exactly the same round cookie cutter and white background with a simple design as well.

Obviously I'm all about the simple things, I like to think that's my strong point, here at Bubble and Sweet we're all for simply sweet treats.

So once again take a sugar cookie and cover in shop bought white ready roll fondant or home made marshmallow fondant. To do this you roll out fondant quite thinly and cut out the round shape with the same cookie cutter you have used to cut the cookie so they should be the same size. Brush a little water onto the cookie using a clean brush and adhere the fondant pressing it on lightly with a rolling pin.

Then cut out some small triangles and make the bunting shape. I used small ateco triangles from my fondant cutter shapes and trimmed a tiny amount of the top of each one, but you could just draw a template and cut them yourself with a sharp knife. Then adhere each of the little triangle buntings with a tiny amount of water starting from one end of the cookie and working your way across to the other end with a slight curve down to look like flags hanging from a string.

 

This design is easy to adapt to any colour theme, a light blue background with red and white bunting, or green with lilac and pink would look perfect. If you like you can even get an edible marker and write on the bunting.

Here is a link to my sugar cookie recipe or chocolate sugar cookie recipe

Here is a link to marshmallow fondant recipe

Cherry Love Cookies for the Polkadot Prints printable range

Do you love cherries like I love cherries.

If the answer is yes you must check out the gorgeous new Polkadot Prints Cherry Love printables range.

 

Yup Love It! Told you. Especially the straw tags. I Love them! They are the new must have bling for you party drinks and would also look great on cake pops as well.

I baked up some cookies and some little cherry pies to go along with the printables for a set of photo's taken by Naomi V Photography.

The cookies are so simple, just a large round sugar cookie topped with white ready rolled fondant, a couple of smaller circles of ready rolled fondant and then a hand shaped stem and leaves.

The green ones are a ruffled round cutter (I used one from my Ikea cookie cutter set) sugar cookie topped with a green round ready rolled fondant cut out. Hand shaped round balls of red fondant, hand shaped stems and leaves and then some dots of royal icing around the edges.

Cherry Love printables - totally sweet, you can check out Jordan from Polkadot prints blog post on it here.

Oh and the pie crust recipe is from my book being released in December, Sweets on a Stick, it's the sugar pie crust recipe I use to make all my pie pops with.

Baked and Delicious Magazine Review

Bitter Chocolate Pudding recipe from Baked and Delicious Issue 1

The people at Baked and Delicious sent me a copy of the 1st Issue of their magazine to have a look at the other day.

It's one of those regular magazines that makes part of a complete set when finished, this one comes out every fortnight and includes some type of silicone bakeware with each issue.

Issue 1 was only $2.99 and included a 6 pack of cupcake bakeware. I noticed at the IGA today that to just buy a similar set of bakeware on it's own was nearly $12, so I'll have to say that issue 1 is a bargin without even taking the magazine into account. Issue 2 is a special price of $7.99 and from then on the issues will be $14.99 for the magazine and the bakeware.

There is also an enticing subscriber offer valued at $75 which includes a binder, cake slicer/server, set of cake tins and Electronic Scales.These gifts are sent gradually with your first 4 subscription deliveries which will come every 2 weeks for $14.99 + $1 P&P (which is the regular price after the first couple of introductory issues). Although you can cancel your subscription at any time it's worth remembering there are about 60 issues in total at $14.99 so take that into consideration when working out if those free gifts are worth it.

Also make sure you check out the fine print, there may be extra special issues and binders as well which would be extra on top of the fortnightly amount, so you'll need to tick the applicable boxes if your not interested in those extra's.

Anyway onto the actual magazine. It's a 28 page magazine which kinda seems small in comparison to lots of other magazines out these days, but it didn't have any advertising so I guess that's a plus. Also there are lots of colour pictures which I always love. In all the index shows a total of 8 recipes plus a step by step technique to making choux pastry and information on using silicone bakeware. Most of the recipes had a variation to try and a couple had step by step photographs.

The recipes were a mix of savory and sweet with a definite leaning towards sweet in this issue and included cupcakes, macarons, chocolate puddings. You can actually check it out yourself on their website, the first issue is available to view online.

I decided to try out the bitter chocolate pudding, it took under an hour from start to finish for me to make these, and that included reading the recipe, getting out all the ingredients, baking and plating up. I cooked mine for a couple of minutes too long, so it didn't have a really melty oozy middle, but it was still very delicious and soooo easy to make. Only 5 ingredients and hand mixed in a bowl......oh and it used up a couple of egg yolks which is always a super plus for me.

I was also impressed with how easily it turned out of the ramkin as I was expecting it to stick. In all honesty I would make this recipe again due to it's ease and how great it tasted.

OK so to round up, I guess $14.99 is pretty expensive for just the magazine with a few recipes but this magazine is aiming to build your baking skills and bakeware at the same time and includes an item of silicone bakeware with each issue. Issue 2 has a silicone brush and spatula set and issue 3 a silicone loaf mould.

As I mentioned you can pop over to their site and check out the magazine yourself to determine if you think this magazine would be worth the investment.

Wedding Cake Sugar cookies and a Handmade Wedding DIY shoot with Luminoso Blu and Naomi V

Photography Naomi V Photography : Milk Glass: Hummingbird Vintage Hire

A little while ago, I made some treats for Luminoso Blu for a 'Handmade' Wedding shoot for the Queensland Brides magazine to accompany an article Renee from Luminoso Blu wrote.

Styling Luminoso Blu Events, Cake: Miss Jane's Cakes, Flowers: A Sculpted Leaf 

I provided some simple swirl cupcakes, upside down cake pops decorated with a white fondant sugar heart, rustic stacked trio of cookies and large wedding cake shaped cookies decorated with red hearts.

Styling Luminoso Blu Events

All photo's by Naomi V Photography.

Tissue paper bouquet: Ah-Tissue

The cookies are a great idea for a DIY bride as they can easily be made a week and a half before, placed in cello bags with ribbon and card or boxed and stored in large airtight containers. Just make sure everything is super clean when you are making them and that you give them a chance to set/dry before you bag them.

To make the large wedding cake cookies I simply made a batch of sugar cookie dough (click here for a link to my sugar cookie recipe). Cut out the cookies with a large cake shaped cookie cutter, baked and allowed to cool. Then I rolled out the ready roll fondant on a cornflower/ cornstarch dusted workbench (I use Bakels ready to roll fondant it's available online at specialty cake stores try Cakes Around Town or Baking Pleasures) and using the large cake shaped cookie cutter I cut out fondant and adhered it to the already baked and cooled cookie using a small amount of clean water and a brush you only use for food purposes.

Then I used a small amount of fondant coloured red with gel food colour (knead the colour into the fondant very well, try and do the night before for best results) rolled it out thinly and cut out hearts with 2 different sized heart cutters. I carefully pinched the ends and pulled them to the side to give the heart a bit of a funky look. I adhered the hearts to the white fondant covered cookies with a tiny amount of water and allowed them to set uncovered.

Flowers: A Sculpted Leaf 

Like I said perfect DIY and you can easily change the colours to match your own special event.

Invitations and table place cards: Kijaro Invitations

Here is a list of the lovely contributors

DIY crafting and styling: Luminoso Blu Events
Photography: Naomi V Photography
Invitations and table place cards: Kijaro Invitations
Cake: Miss Jane's Cakes
Cookies, cake pops and cupcakes: Bubble and Sweet
Tissue paper bouquet: Ah-Tissue
Milk Glass: Hummingbird Vintage Hire
Flowers: A Sculpted Leaf 

 

This is just a quick shot I took myself before the shoot to show the stacked cookies up close

and a quick link to my book of kid friendly cooking and decorating available for pre order for December release.