Ice breaker - 3D portrait

 As I mentioned in my previous post, I have decided to make a sugar cookie with my face on it. I started by creating a cookie dough. 

For the dough I have found a recipe but I thought that the recipe would create too many cookies and I really wanted just a one large cookie. I decided to scale down the proportions for this recipe and I scaled down all the proportions except the eggs because the original recipe asked for one egg and I didn't know how to add half an egg. Me adding too much egg, made the texture too wet and it kind of messed with the cookie's structure but I made it work. Generally the recipe said to add flour, egg, powdered sugar (I added normal sugar because I couldn't find powdered sugar), butter and baking powder, I have also added vanilla sugar for the nice vanilla flavor I personally really like. 

I put all of the ingredients in a metal bowl in a stand mixer. The recipe stated to mix all of the ingredients until all of them are nicely combined. My ingredients were not very nicely combined because I added normal sugar instead of powdered sugar, therefore I just waited until it all was a one big blob. 

The consistency was too wet as I stated before, but it did not stop me much. Firstly I needed to keep the dough in the fridge for an hour, then I put the image I printed before in a document sleeve and on the document sleeve I started placing the dough to create shapes I needed. When I had all the shapes, I placed them on a baking pan and put them in an oven for 15 minutes in 180 degrees. After that time my cookies were ready.

I was quite happy with the shapes but the cookies were not as smooth as I would want them to be and that is because the dough was too wet. It is a mistake I should have avoided somehow but before making it I did not know it would come out this way. 

Next I wanted to create a glaze to glaze the cookies, but it turned out we were out of sugar pens and there was no frosting at home so I had to take a ride to a supermarket to buy those things. 

I found this Writing Icing and frosting in a local supermarket and that is what I bought. I never had neither of those two products therefore I was not sure how they would work. I bought them because I could not find the sugar pens I always use when cooking. 

When I got home I started the decorating process by outlining the cookies with the pen. My first issue with this pen was its thickness and also that it was not fully hardening. It was behaving like yoghurt and it was also not very tasty. I would not recommend it to be completely honest. 

This is how I outlined the cookie. I do not see it as especially good job, however knowing the tools I was working with, it is not very bad. My next step was preparing the frosting. I have never used this frosting so I read the instructions and followed them to get my frosting done. 

When the frosting was melted I have put it in bowls and added food coloring I always use. For some reason this frosting would not take the color and by that I mean the food coloring powder would not change into color but it stayed as powder. It could have been because of the thickness of the frosting or because of the ingredients in it. To get at leas a little bit of color I had to throw a lot of food coloring in the frosting and that made the frosting taste absolutely gross and bitter. 

The bowls with the frosting turned mostly gray and the color was very faint. It got me very annoyed but I had to work with what I had. 

I was placing the frosting onto the cookie with spoons and with toothpicks to create different surfaces and to spread the frosting evenly. It turned out that the frosting was hardening quite fast so I needed to work quick which usually makes the work messy. 

This is how I have added color to the hair and the brows. Next I needed to make a skin color and I only had a bright orange color and I was already aware that the frosting would not take much of the color so I was scared to waste the frosting on a bad color. I decided to ad cinnamon to the frosting to create the sort of beige shade and it would also make the frosting taste better. 

Adding cinnamon was actually a good idea because it created a nice scent to the cookie and the shade was exactly what I have expected. When I filled everything with it I have added some red food coloring onto the lips and outlined the glasses with dark purple for it to go with the purple/pink hair. I know I don't have purple/pink hair but to be completely honest I have been thinking about dying them that way for a while now, so it is just me representing how maybe I would like to look like or how I see myself.

Here is my finished sugar cookie:

This cookie is quite messy and the purple frosting tastes really bad, but I think it is fun to look at and it definitely was a fun exercise for me personally to try to do some cookie art I have never done. I wish the frosting was smoother and I would achieve it by buying a different type or making one from scratch. This one was generally too thick from the beginning and it was difficult to work with especially since it was not taking any color I tried adding to it. Generally I think it was a really fun experiment and I enjoyed working with food a lot. I would eat the cookie now but I got to say the purple frosting is too bitter to eat. I might eat just the cinnamon part which smells very nicely.