Elsa Brown Sugar Cookies

As mentioned in my previous post for Olaf cookies, this particular request includes Elsa as well. 14 were requested but here's a close-up view of one of them :).

I must admit that this batch really tested my patience and whatever little artistic skills I have! I think I will not make as many as 14 in the future! About 6 is as many as I am willing to go :p. There's definitely room for improvement and I need to figure out how to add on really fine features. Sometimes the icing doesn't land on where I wanted it to go so Elsa ended up having a thicker eyeliner than she was supposed to have!

I used the same brown sugar cookies and royal icing recipe which can be found here. Roll the dough to 5-6 mm thick and bake at 160-170°C for 16-18 minutes or until browned.

As for the colours of the icing, here's what I did to get more natural looking colours:
Skin: ivory + a bit of rose pink
Hair: ivory + a bit of golden yellow + a bit of black/ dark brown
Lips: rose pink + red + bits of purple and teal
Clothes: sky blue + a bit of violet and/or royal blue or teal

Just to share some photos of the whole process...

Cutting out the dough from homemade template and freshly baked cookies

Tracing and filling out the outlines with edible marker

Icing the face!

 I used an unorthodox method of icing by filling in all facial features before outlining and flooding the face. Most people would add on the eyebrows and mouth later. Probably the nose as well. The reason is, my freehand drawing is not that good so I find it hard to fill in the features after the face has been filled with flesh colored icing, even with the help of a template. Homemade templates are good enough if very fine precision is not required. As far as human portraits go, any slight deviation in features will change the entire face. If I had a Kopykake projector, it would be a different story!

 I tried to create a 3D nose by first icing a thick blob and waiting for it to harden before flooding with flesh coloured icing. I am not clever enough to come up with this cool trick for the nose. I got the idea from here.

Adding in the clothes... I had an extra bit of cookie for testing out icing and painting effects.

Adding in the hair. This alone took me 3-4 hours!

Adding in the purple eye shadow and black portions of the eyes. I used a fine brush/toothpick/needle to help me apply the icing. Very fiddly work!

Adding in fine details like white glint in the eye, peach coloured lustre dust blusher, snowflakes in the hair and brushed some white icing on the clothes.

All packed together with Olaf!

It took me almost a whole week to work on these two characters (20 cookies in total) from making the templates to packing the completed cookies. You definitely need lots of patience for these!

With love and patience,
Phay Shing