Once Upon A Cookie ~ Princess Jasmine
It’s been a while, hasn’t it, since I last posted a cookie from the Once Upon A Cookie series I’m slowly working on. If this is the first one you’re seeing, I’m using this adorable piece of art by suisei-ojii-sama to make a set of fantasy princesses cookies. Other fairy tale cookies are waiting to be made, too, but I’ll just have to take it one step at a time. So far, this is my third princess, and the other two are here:
And now princess Jasmine. She was fairly straightforward to make, the only thing which took a little longer was figuring out how to get icing to match the mustard color. More on that in the tutorial below. So, without further ado…
How to Make a Princess Jasmine Cookie
You will need:
- Sugar Cookie Recipe here or Gingerbread Recipe here.
- Royal Icing Recipe here.
- Piping Tips (#1.5, #2, #3)
- Couplers
- Piping Bags
- Food Gel Colourings – white, black, Americolor warm brown, Wilton brown, sky blue, teal, lemon yellow
- Kopykake Projector (Im not skilled at drawing so need to use a Kopykake projector to trace the images)
- Paring Knife
You can make your cookies all in one day, but I like to break it up a bit. Here are a few schedule examples:
Instructions:
Making the Cookie Base
To begin, I printed my image and made the outline a little darker with pen as the image didn’t have sharp outlines. Drawing darker outlines helps the image show up better with the Kopykake Projector.
Insert the image into the projector and draw the shape of the cookie you’d like onto paper. You can use other material besides paper, like a transparency sheet or cardstock. If you’d like to keep the template for more than a few cookies or for future uses, you can even have it laminated at your local print shop.
Cut out your template and place it onto your dough. Cut out your shape using a paring knife. I usually make a few, even if I only want to end up with one cookie. That way I’ve got a back up if one cookie breaks. (And I’m a clutz so I need to have back-ups!).
As the dough is soft at this point, you can smooth the edges down with your fingertips (forgot to take a pic of that). Bake and let your cookies cool.
Something to note ~ If you’ve got let’s say 100 of these to make, using a hand-cut template like this probably isn’t something you’d want to do. Too labour intensive in my humble opinion. You might want to look into buying a cookie cutter kit or, if you’re crafty that way, buying what you need at the hardware store to make your own custom cutter. I wouldn’t want to make 100 Jasmine’s either way though, she’s more of a detailed cookie to be put with some simpler designs.
Preparing and Coloring the Icing
The consistency of the icing is key. For a how-to on how to find the right consistency, please see this video here. To color the icing, I like to print a color pic of the image I’m using, and use it to try and match the icing color to the picture. I dab a small amount on the paper with a toothpick, and try and see how I need to change the color until I’m happy with it.
For the Jasmine cookie, I used the following gel colors:
I ususally like using the squeeze bottle, Americolor chocolate brown instead of the Wilton, but I was out the nearest store to me which carries food gel is Michael’s (they only have Wilton where I live). I ended up really liking it.
It took the longest for me to figure out how to get right the mustard color, and although I can’t give you exact amounts of each gel paste, here are the combinations I used to make…
- Mustard – Lemon yellow, warm brown, regular Wilton brown.
- Blue outline of Jasmine’s pants etc. – sky blue and a touch of teal
- Blue of Jasmine’s pants etc. – above color diluted with more white icing
- Grey – touch of black
- Skin tone – Wilton brown, touch of warm brown
- Dark brown outline – Wilton brown
Outlining the Cookie
You’ll need the darker brown, the brighter blue and grey for the first decorating step. You can find tips on piping royal icing in see my cookie decorating tutorial or YouTube videos.
Using piping tip #1.5 and my Kopykake Projector, I outlined the following lines first:
No worries if you make a mistake, like I did below. I just used a toothpick to scrape off the icing I didn’t want. If your cookie base is a bit colored, gently use the toothpick to remove that surface of the cookie, revealing an uncolored cookie beneath!
Flooding the Cookie
Once you’ve let the outlines dry, flood Jasmine’s face, legs and torso and white belt in. I used a #2 piping tip.
Shake the cookie gently to help smooth the icing over. In this case her shape wasn’t too delicate, but just a tip if you’re working with a very fragile shape and intricate flooding areas ~ make your icing a little runnier so you don’t have to shake the cookie as much (5 second rule – See here for the video), and so the icing runs into tight areas easier. Be aware that runnier icing causes more craters to happen in small areas though, and is harder to control.
Let the face and body icing set for about an hour and then add the next layer of icing details; in this case, Jasmine’s hair, hairband, shoes, pants and the base of her sleeves. I used a #2 piping tip for all colors but the blue, where I used piping tip #3. For larger areas, like her pants I like a larger piping tip to flood the area faster.
Notice that I made her pants ‘poofy’ (lots of icing), but her feet less full. Small areas of flooded icing tend to develop craters caused, most likely, by air pockets under the icing and surface tension. Filling small areas in with less icing, helps to alleviate this issue.
Let those areas dry for 6-12 hours (Time depends on the humidity in your area. Please see here for a video on drying decorated cookies).
Final Details
Pipe the top layers of detail, in this case, Jasmine’s sleeves and top, outlining her pants etc., and filling in her earrings, necklace and jewel.
Let those areas dry and fill in her her top and another layer of her her – this time just her bangs. Layering icing creates a little depth.
On to one of my favorite parts – disco dust!
Thanks to those of you on Instagram who helped me chose which blue disco dust I should use! (Sorry about the shadowy iphone pics btw!).
While I was waiting for the responses on Instagram, I went ahead and piped Jasmine’s eyes with black icing and a #2 tip.
The final touch – adding the disco dust to the wet blue icing at the center of Jasmine’s jewel.
Serve as is or let dry and package in a cellophane bag tied with ribbon. I didn’t make them this time, but wouldn’t Alladin, Alladin’s lamp and the carpet be adorable cookies to go with her?!
Please feel free to drop me a line below if you have any questions or comments!
Happy decorating!
xo,
Marian