Kawaii Cupcake Cookies

About a year ago a friend asked me to design some cupcake cookies for her daughter's birthday party...and of course I accepted the request.  I had an idea in mind...which I ended up doing but wasn't overly happy with the result.  If only I could wind back time and make her these ones instead, everything would be so darn sweet.



I started out with making my own template {again...still - when will I learn?}, and then I coloured it in with the shades I figured I would use to help me visualize the end result.

I covered my template in packing tape so the oils from the cookie dough wouldn't seep through and wreck it or make my markers bleed...smart eh?   Then I cut out my cookies from my everyday sugar cookie recipe about 1/2" thick or so.  I was able to squeeze 12 of these out of my dough (which remained from the lollypop cookies made the day before).  After they were baked for about 10-12 minutes (until a slight indentation was left in the top when touched), I let them cool and then to ease my icing I drew on each of them with an edible food writer.

Then I piped the outlines with black royal icing and let them set.  {I tried to pipe on the outside of the blue lines so that the icing used to fill the cookie would hide my marks}

 After they were firm and dry I started to fill in the rest of the spaces with my colours of choice, leaving space between areas so I would get the full effect of puffy icing without having overflow and merging of colours.   After doing the cupcake tops I let the icing set briefly before adding the pre-dried pink cheeks {which would bind to the white icing and not bleed into the white icing}.  I filled the cherries in last after the white icing had set so that my disco dust wouldn't stick to everything, and I could tap off the excess if needed and recycle it next time.  Finally, I finished off the cookies with adding the black accent swirly lines, eyes and smiles.