Shopkins Donut Cookies Made (Royal Icing) toppers for cupcakes

Last week  I was signed up for a cake delivery for a special 5 year old homeless girl in a shelter close to home. Many of you know I bake for a charity that brings birthday's to homeless kids in shelters around Washington. If you ever have extra party supplies or toys please think of Birthday Dreams, we can all make a child's special day be just that special!

I did some googling since I have boys and never heard of this theme. I found they had several fun food characters with little faces. I picked the donuts that had cute little eyes and a smile! 

I'm a bit obsessed with royal icing cookies right now. I've been using the cookies as the toppers for my cupcakes I make. It's like the best of all words a cupcake with tons of frosting and a cookie to eat also!! My youngest is obsessed with this technique, yup he's so my child all about the sugar (I have no clue where he would get this from ... as she whistles and looks away .... lol). Below are the cookies used and the cupcakes assembled (I also made eye's, you'll see that post tomorrow).

What you Need:

Circle Cookie Cutters (one medium, one small)
Frosted Cupcakes

Royal Icing - Tinted Pink (see recipe below)
Americolor Pink Food Gel 
Americolor Black Food Gel
Wilton Candy Eyes
Candy Sprinkles (I bought mine at Hobby Lobby, here's a link to Amazon's)

Piping Bag of  black Royal Icing (for Mouth)

 

Since I didn't have a donut cookie cutter I made my own. I used a medium circle cutter to cut out my first shapes. I then took a small cookie cutter to cut out the centers, to make them look like donuts. I used the dipping method with my royal icing. I started to do the dipping method about 6 months ago to speed up my decorating time. You can pipe each cookie which is a little cleaner but I find the dipping method to be the best. You get your royal icing to the outline consistency and put into a pie dish (I find this is not too deep). BEFORE dry you can add your details. I used the sprinkles first, you have to add when the pink is wet so they will stick. I also added on the eyeballs at this time so they stuck. I then waited until dry to pipe on the mouth. I added a little black royal icing to a ziplock bag (since it was a small amount I didn't want to waste a pipping bag).

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INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cups butter, softened 2 cups white sugar 4 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

5 cups all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS:

1.	In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2.	Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3.	Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

Julie Usher, she has a GREAT YouTube video on how to make, color and make consistency adjustments. 

Royal Icing what you need:

2 lbs Powdered Sugar

1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar

5 Large Egg Whites (or equivalent) 

Flavor to Taste

Gel Icing Color

Mix powder sugar and cream of tartar in your mixer, just to make sure it is incorporated in. Slowly add egg whites, then whip start of slow then go to very high speed. She says around 2 minutes, my friend had an older mixer so it took almost 10 minutes. You want stiff peaks that hold on and won't fall off the spoon. Add in your flavor, I would suggest you use a clear flavoring.  This would be the glue texture great for ginger bread houses etc.

Take 1 cup of royal icing in a smaller bowl then add your coloring, lightly mix so you don't get air into the the icing. I'm like her and like the gel coloring. 

For Top Coating - Add 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 tsp Water (This is if you don't want to outline and flood)

For Outlining - Add 1/2 to 3/4 tsp Water

For Flooding  - Add 2 to 3 tsp Water

WATCH her video on How to Top-Coat, Outline, and Flood Cookies. YES it is around 7 minutes BUT if you have never done this technique it's a MUST she explains it perfectly.