When my friend Christy asked if I could whip up some cookies for her little ballerina’s first dance recital, I did my own little cookie pirouette! Sparkles and crinoline topped off with daisy faces ranks with wedding cookies on my special-o-meter. This stuff is sweet in all ways and so much fun to make!
It all started with this darling picture. Can you believe there were red and purple ballerinas to match? Just the cutest.
The first order of business for these beauties was finding a tutu cutter. After some searching at my local cooking and cake decorating shops, I went back to my own cookie stash and found a rarely used dress cutter.
In true LilaLoa fashion, I started pulling and bending the cutter into a wider skirt. Here’s my repurposed cutter in action:
For the flower faces, I used a standard daisy cutter and then used a melon baller to imprint a perfect circle in the middle of each pre-baked cookie. The circle served as a uniform guide to apply the icing.
To create the faces, I followed the tips I’ve seen for fondant figurines. One of my favorite inspiration books is Debbie Brown’s Gorgeous and Gruesome Cakes for Children.
After flooding the inner circles of the daisy cookies, I let them dry overnight. The next day, I added little “blobs” of icing for noses and eyelids. When those parts dried, I added the black lashes, eyes and mouths with a fine-tipped edible marker. In between, I added the “over top” piping and bows.
This project was also one of my first attempts to follow the good advice of many talented cookiers. Sweetopia suggests that you preserve sanity by spreading the project over a few days. So I baked on day 1, flooded the background colors on day 2 and added details and glitter on day 3.
Also – for once in my life – I followed Sugarbelle’s frosting consistency mantra and took the time to make thin flood icing and preserved a thicker icing for piping. The extra work was well worth the effort and I’ll try, try, try with all my might to remember that the next time I’m in a “cookie panic” to get a project done.
paddle attachment 