Decoration Cookies: For Your Cakes on Doll's Day
- 80 grams Flour (cake flour)
- 40 grams Sugar
- 10 grams Almond flour
- 30 grams Butter
- 2 or 3 drops Vanilla essence/extract
- 1/2 of small spoon contained in box Food coloring (red)
- 1/4 tsp Matcha
- 2 pens of the dark brown, 1 pen each of other colors Chocolate decorating pen (dark brown, white, pink)
- 1 Other decorations (silver dragees, chocolate chips)
- Place a large bowl on your scale, and measure out the flour, sugar, and almond flour.
- Mix the dry ingredients together, breaking apart any clumps.
- Melt the butter and add to the bowl.
- Mix the contents and bring the crumbly dough together by pressing it together.
- Add vanilla essence at this stage.
- Once the dough has come together, slice into thirds.
- Add food coloring to the previously used bowl, and dissolve with a few drops of water.
- Add another third portion of dough the bowl with the red food coloring in small bits, so as to make the mixing process easier.
- Make sure that the coloring spreads throughout the dough evenly.
- Once the color has been incorporated, bring the dough together again by pressing the crumbs together.
- In the bowl with the remaining third portion of dough, sprinkle in the matcha.
- Mix so the color spreads around evenly.
- Don't dissolve the matcha in water before adding it to the dough.
- Divide each color into five portions.
- Shape them into ellipses.
- This is how they look from the side.
- They form a little platform, I guess, so the top is a bit narrower than the base.
- With the last remaining third portion of dough for the heads.
- Round the balls so that they turn out just a tad flat on one side (for the tops of their heads).
- Line the body and head portions evenly.
- Bake them first at 150C for 15 minutes, then at 130C for 5 minutes.
- These are the baked cookies stacked like in Step 10.
- The heads are slightly flattened.
- Start warming up the decorating pens in a bain-marie.
- Adjust the position of the heads so that the green emperors slant towards the left, while the pink empresses slant toward the right.
- This way, they'll look like they're meeting each other in the middle when placed next to one another.
- Draw on the collars of the emperor's robes.
- They look a bit neater if you slant the emperors' collar "folds" to the right, and slant the empress' to the left.
- Use a white chocolate decorating pen to outline the sleeves.
- Draw the outlines of their robes with a chocolate decorating pens.
- You can use the pink color to give your empress sleeves and collars as well.
- Trace out the emperors' hairlines.
- This is how they look from a bird's eye view.
- Fill in the outlines with a chocolate decorating pens.
- Spread the chocolate evenly with the tips of their pens.
- This is how the emperors look from the back.
- I tried to keep their hair up to the middle of the backs of their heads.
- Place chocolate chips on top of heads of the emperors, to give them little ritual crowns.
- You can glue these on with a chocolate decorating pen.
- Give your empresses hair.
- Leave some space in the front for their faces, but the hair can reach all the way down the back, up to their shoulders.
- Decorate the tops of their heads with dragee pearls.
- These are how the empresses look from behind.
- I did haven't much of the dark brown decoration left at this point, so I skimped a bit...
- They would probably have looked better if their hair was a bit longer.
- Give your dolls cute faces.
- Make them laugh, have them look prim and smug -- have fun giving them all sorts of expressions!
- Stick on some extra decoration on the robes as desired.
- I used sprinkles that I had left over from Valentine's Day.
- If you have any chocolate left over in your decorating pens, this would be a good time to use it up!
- Here are the emperors.
- I gave their robes a refined touch with some brown embellishments.
- Take the size of your dolls into consideration and draw out the fans and ritual batons with the chocolate decorating pen.
- Draw them on top of a baking sheet and chill in the refrigerator to harden.
- Use the chocolate from your decorating pen as glue to stick on the dolls' fans and ritual batons where their hands would be.
- Perch them on top of your pretty cakes.
- Prepare them about 2-3 days in advance and set them on your cakes the day of the celebration.
- We're a five-member household, so I prepared five pairs of dolls this time around.
- But it's a good idea to make four pairs and use up the material for the last one to make other items like "Hishimochi" (decorative tri-color mochi associated with Doll's Day).
flour, sugar, flour, butter, vanilla essence, pens, decorations
Taken from cookpad.com/us/recipes/158794-decoration-cookies-for-your-cakes-on-dolls-day (may not work)