I was asked by my lovely sister-in-law to recreate the peapod cookies and cupcake toppers off of
Hostess with the Mostess. As far as I can decipher, I believe the original design was from Sweeten Your Day in Utah. They were so cute! I was excited for the challenge. Her friend is expecting twins- a boy and a girl.
Using the pictures off of the site, I recreated them. Here's how:
COOKIES
I needed two batches of
cookie dough and a double batch of
royal icing for this project. (I used the royal icing for the cupcake toppers, too.)
Roll out and cut your cookies with a
scalloped cookie cutter. The original design was a square, but I already had this cutter which was rectangular. Either spray your pan with Pam or use parchment. I had a few stick and fall apart on my first batch. Boo!
Bake them until you start seeing that golden brown on the edges- about 10-12 minutes.
Roll out and cut small circle cookies for the baby heads. I needed 12. Make sure you bake these separately They don't take as long!!
For the icing:
I took out a good amount of white and put it in a piping bag (tip #3). Then, in 3 small bowls, I put a small amount of icing. In one bowl, I mixed in soft pink. In another, I used brown. And in the last, I used egg yellow.Make sure you cover these with a damp towel while you are mixing the others. I put these in piping bags with #3 tips.
Use the rest of the icing to make the green. I kept the icing in my stand mixer bowl, adding a small amount of green and mixing it on med-high until I was happy with the color. Then make a piping bag (I used tip #4) with the green. Always keep your icing covered while not in use, even the tip of your piping bag!
Once the cookies have completely cooled, outline them with green.
Once all of the cookies have green outlines, make your green flood icing. You should be done with the green outline icing, so empty your piping bag back into the bowl of green icing. To make your flood icing, add a teaspoon of water at a time to the green icing. Stir it until thoroughly mixed. Add water until you can drag your spoon through it and it goes back to its original shape in about 3 seconds. When you have the right consistency, cover it up and let it sit for at least 15 minutes. This will allow all the air bubbles to come up. Then, pull a spatula through the icing to get rid of the bubbles.
I use squirt bottles to flood my cookies, but you can also use a piping bag. Make another outline with this icing touching the outline that is already there. Try to cover any imperfections in your outline with the flood icing.
Then, fill in the rest. Use a toothpick to move the icing to fill in spots. Also use a toothpick to pop any remaining air bubbles.
Let these sit at least 6-8 hours or overnight before decorating.
When the flood icing is dry, make the white scallop outline on each cookie. On the boy and girl cookies, attach a circle cookie to the corner with white royal icing. Then, use the brown to make the face on the circle. Add the bow or tuft of hair to the head. Finally, add the name!
For the "Sweet Peas," just do the scallop outline, then write "Sweet Peas," and last add the flower. Use your yellow to add the finishing dot.
Done! (Excuse the messy table in this pic, toddler at work!)
Your hand will probably feel like "the claw" by now. I know mine did. But it will go away. :)
CUPCAKE TOPPERS
I used a leaf cookie cutter to cut the peapods. To get a more rounded edge, I cut out a smaller shape than I wanted and then rolled them out a bit to flatten them. This also made them all slightly different shapes and sizes, which I like.
I then put them over a wooden spoon to get a curve. I let them sit for an hour or so, until they kept their shape. Once they kept their shape, I covered them up. That way, when I added the baby faces, they wouldn't be too brittle.
I then cut out and shaped small rectangles for the stems. I adhered them to the peapods with gum glue.
To make gum glue, dissolve a very small amount of gum paste in about a tablespoon or two of water. Use a food brush to brush it on.
I used a clay extruder that I bought off of Amazon to make the curly ques. I put a small amount of green in the extruder and used the seven-holed disc. After cranking, it made 7 at a time. Time saver! Twist the ends in between your fingers to bring them to a point. Then curl them around and let dry.
Next, to make the babies' heads, I used a small amount of copper food coloring to tint my fondant the flesh color. It looked orange at first, GASP!, but the more I worked it in, the more peachy it became.
I rolled it out and cut it out with a small circle cookie cutter. I rolled each circle into a ball and smashed it with my thumb to make the baby heads. Squish them together in pairs and attach them to the peapods with gum glue.
Now the details:
Using brown royal icing, I put two eyes on each baby face. I used a small heart cookie cutter to indent the smile into each face. Then on the girl baby, I added a small pink bow with pink royal icing.
Lastly, I attached the curly que to the top of the boy baby's head with gum glue.
Let dry. Cute, cute, cute!
Here are the tools I used for this project:
a clay extruder, a medium leaf cookie cutter, a wooden spoon, and a small Wilton fondant roller with guide rings
