Friday, December 14, 2012

And The Cutter Is A....

I made a new cookie cutter and I asked all of you to guess what it is. Then I offered to make this cookie cutter for one lucky reader. You didn't have to be correct in your guess, just have fun and play along. The guesses were a lot of fun. MOST of the guesses were for an elephant. Some said an elephant with a crown. Some said an elephant with a party hat. Many said Ursula, the Sea Witch. Some said an octopus. A few guessed a bear with a santa hat. One said a crawling baby with a pacifier. There were a lot of fun ideas. Well do you want to know what this cutter is meant to be?

Cookie Cutter Available HERE
Download Tutorial Cards HERE
Free Printable Cookie Tags HERE
Lets start by announcing the WINNER! Drum roll please....
Congratulations to....

#103 Sandra G
And Sandra's guess: An elephant with a ruffled cap
I have sent you an email to get your shipping address and the cutter can go out today. Congratulations and thanks for playing along!

For those that didn't win the cutter and still want one, you can find it HERE

So here is the intended purpose of the cookie cutter. It is a polar bear wearing a winter hat!
 Isn't she cute? I love her.
 and I love her friends too...



I had a lot of fun with these polar bears
 and used a lot of really fun colors
Want to see my inspiration in creating the cookie cutter? Yep, you guessed it. It's that adorable granddaughter, Abigail. I'm just a little bit obsessed with her ;-)

Here's a quick tutorial on how to make the polar bear with winter hat. Start with your polar bear cookie cutter.
 If you've seen my baking tutorials on Cristin's Cookies at YouTube, you know I like to work with small amounts of dough at a time so that it stays chilled and MUCH easier to cut through the dough and not spread in baking. And yes, I use a child size rolling pin even though I have a bunch of beautiful rolling pins, I prefer the smaller one. I'm weird in case you didn't know. Haven't you seen the pink hair?
 Then use your cookie cutter to cut the dough. I like to dip my cookie cutter in flour, especially in areas with little legs. This helps for a clean cut. 
 I also give all my cutters a little wiggle in the dough before I pull it out of the cookie dough. After you do that, you end up with a weird looking elephant/ursula/snuffleupagus/alien looking thing that you will make adorable into a polar bear with winter hat. Yes, you will. Honest. Use your finger or toothpick or one of those yellow boo-boo sticks to clean up the edges of your cookie if needed before baking.
 Do you have a Silpat? Oh wow. I swear by these. I just got mine for my birthday in August and I bought two more since then. I can't imagine baking without it. No more scraping your beautiful cookie off a cookie sheet and ruining your design. Silpats are GREAT!
 Now it's time to outline your design. Now if you're really smart, you will wait to add the eyes until after your cookie is flooded. But I ALWAYS complicate things. Yep, every time. If you're like me, then you'll have to use a toothpick to get the icing inside those tiny little areas around the eyes. Also choose if you want to outline the pom pom at the top of the hat and the two pom pom's hanging down. In my first set, I didn't outline the two sections hanging down from the hat and in this tutorial, I decided to. Up to you of course.
 Flood the white icing onto your polar bear. 
 Then flood the nose/mouth area of your polar bear. In my first set, I used a light grey, for this tutorial, I used a light brown. Whichever you choose will be great and adorable. I promise. Now let your cookie DRY before beginning the next step OR start with the next step. You do NOT want the white and brown part wet for this next step. Honest, you don't.
 Then flood the liner and the pom pom part of the hat at the top and the cute little hanging pom pom's of the cap. Make sure your cookie is on a paper plate or parchment paper or something that you can easily clean up for the next part. Immediately add a whole ton of sanding sugar to sparkle and add fun to your cookie. Remember the rest of your cookie needs to be dry or that sanding sugar will stick to it.
 Use a new small paint brush to clean off the excess sugar and put the excess back into your large jar of sanding sugar. I love my sanding sugar collection :-)
 You can choose whatever colors you like for your polar bear's winter hat and details. For this tutorial, I used electric green and electric pink by Americolor.
 and there you have an adorable polar bear with winter hat.
 Pretty fun huh! Thanks everyone for playing along. I will be doing this again. I had a lot of fun seeing all the comments.


 Did you know I have a bit of an obsession with polar bears? Yep, but really doesn't Abigail look adorable with her polar bear cookies?!


Polar Bear blog background for today:

10 comments:

  1. These cookies are SO adorable! I cannot WAIT to try these once my cutter arrives!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!

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    Replies
    1. Yay! Thanks Sandra! I can't wait to see your cookies. I was able to get your new cutter out in today's mail. Have a wonderful Christmas! Cristin

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  2. You have the CUTEST inspiration ever!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks so much Ansa. I totally have to agree with you :-)

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  3. WOW! That is a cute cookies...and great cutter...but I have to say Abigail is the hightlight of THIS post!

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  4. I would NEVER have guess that!! Cute cutter, cute cookies and best of all CUTE granddaughter!! Random cookie questions - from one baker to another. Do you use royal icing to decorate your cookies or do you use a glaze? They always look so pretty! I just finished a bunch for a baby shower, but the weather and my royal icing is not drying in time! ugh! Also, do you ship cookies? Thanks!
    Angela Barton

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  5. Hi. Your cookie cutter is adorable! I see that you also made another one that some people made a pegnuin out of. I would love to purchase these 2 cookie cutters? Do you sell them? Thanks. kathleenmcguirk@yahoo.com

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  6. Replies
    1. Yes Liz. There is a link to the shop right under the cookie cutter picture and there are still a couple available in my Etsy shop. I would love to see your cookies! www.etsy.com/shop/cristinscookies

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Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment! I love hearing from you! Cristin