Tuesday, October 27, 2015

3D winter scene - Santa's sleigh


Santa Sleigh by Tunde Dugantsi

I love 3D creations and always wanted to create a Santa's Sleigh. I designed a cutter set and Cookie Cutter Kingdom created it for me. Did you know, that they have a great custom order tool now? If you have a jpg picture of the shape you need, then your cutter is just a few clicks away. I love this tool.


First I baked all the pieces (using the recipe of the 3D hearts): 2 sides, bottom, back, front and the 2+2 reindeer. 


Used brown egg yolk glaze to color (see recipe at 3D hearts) all pieces and decorated the pieces using royal icing.


 I glued together the open legged reindeer with his closed legged buddy.


Now he has 4 legs.


This way it will be easier to stand him up.


Then I laid one side of the sleigh down and glued the bottom and the back to it.


I added the front panel.


Finally glued the other side on top. My icing dries pretty fast, after 30 minutes I could work on it.


I used bead border to hide the glue and to decorate the top.


I coated a cake board with a layer of icing for base and glued the parts on top. When it dried, I added a few icing lines to connect the deer with the sleigh and each other.

Santa Sleigh by Tunde Dugantsi

I hope you like this project! If you make it, please send me a picture. If you need the cutters, find them at https://www.etsy.com/listing/616162076/santas-sleigh-and-reindeers-cookie?ref=shop_home_active_1&sca=1.


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Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Blue Christmas ornaments

Blue gingerbread Christmas ornaments

This set is almost the same, as the red and green ornaments with lace I posted a few weeks ago, just a little easier, as the lace is white, so it's not painted.

Blue gingerbread Christmas ornaments


I started with ornament shapes of Cookie Cutter Kingdom.

Blue gingerbread Christmas ornaments

Flooded all cookies white.

Blue gingerbread Christmas ornaments

And painted the cookies with TruColor airbrush colors Deep Blue Shine and Sky Blue Shine. I love these all natural, bright and shiny colors.

Blue gingerbread Christmas ornaments

The decoration is a simple white lace.

Blue gingerbread Christmas ornaments

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Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Baking with cookie molds

Baking with cookie molds by Tunde Dugantsi

In my book Gingerbread Academy there is a chapter about baking with cookie molds. I will be honest with you: working on the book with Aniko was the first time I made molded cookies and also the last - until now.

I just came back from CookieCon, where I got this gorgeous cookie mold from Springerle Joy. Just looking at it makes me happy. You can imagine, how excited I was to play with it!

Baking with cookie molds by Tunde Dugantsi

And the time has arrived! I had some construction gingerbread ready and my friend came over for a cookie play date. (What a blessing is to have the kids at school - the past 10 years only they had play dates.)

Baking with cookie molds by Tunde Dugantsi

This picture shows the pure beauty of the molded cookie. I left it as it is, just brushed with a little water when I took out of the oven, to enhance the natural color.

Baking with cookie molds by Tunde Dugantsi

This cookie got this nice color and shine when I brushed it with egg yolk right after baking. Egg whites give the same shiny look without the yellowish tone. (See the big hearts of the cover picture. The left one is brushed with yolks, the right one with egg whites. They are both shiny, but their color is slightly different.)

Baking with cookie molds by Tunde Dugantsi

This cookie is colored with the egg yolk glaze. I mixed one egg yolk with one tbsp of milk, divided it in 3 cups and added gel food colors to the mixture.

Baking with cookie molds by Tunde Dugantsi

 I also made bigger heart cookies. I pushed the mold into the middle of the big heart shape and decided to highlight the beauty of the molded pattern with a lace border.

Would you like to play with molds? Check out Springerle Joy, they have hundreds of gorgeous antique replicas! So hard to choose!

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Thursday, October 1, 2015

Christmas ornaments with lace

Gingerbread Christmas ornament by Tunde Dugantsi

I decided to create new ornaments for this season. When I was a child we had some fancy shaped glass ornaments, I wanted to create something similar.

Gingerbread Christmas ornament by Tunde Dugantsi

I designed these shapes. Cutters are now available at Cookie Cutter Kingdom.

Gingerbread Christmas ornament by Tunde Dugantsi

Flooded each cookie with white icing.

Gingerbread Christmas ornament by Tunde Dugantsi

And painted them with gorgeous and healthy TruColor colors. I chose Super Red Shine and Holly Green Shine. They come in powder form, I use distilled water to dilute as much as I need.

Gingerbread Christmas ornament by Tunde Dugantsi

I wanted to decorate them with golden lace, so I made some yellowish icing. It will look nice with the gold paint.

Gingerbread Christmas ornament by Tunde Dugantsi

When the lace was ready I let it dry completely.

Gingerbread Christmas ornament by Tunde Dugantsi

Then I painted the lace with TruColor Gold Shine. I love to use this color instead of the "non toxic" gold dusts available on the market. 

Gingerbread Christmas ornament by Tunde Dugantsi

I still need to learn how to make nice pictures of shiny cookies, but I hope you still like it!

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