Christmas Holly-day fondant snowman tutorial

Over the next few days, we've got some cool fondant cookie tutorials, brought to you by the lovely Lisa from the Whole Cake and Caboodle here in Whangarei. Today's tutorial is the friendly snowman.

Roll stiffened fondant with tylosese or use gumpaste  to a depth of around 4-5 mm thick. Overlay with a piece of plastic wrap and stamp out required amount of heads using an approx. 4-5 cm round cutter. The wrap softens and rounds the edges. You don’t need to do this, its just a nice effect

Using an approx. 2.5-3 cm round cutter holding it at an angle as shown, press down to mark a half round smile on the faces.

Dot the ends of the smiles with a pointed tool to accentuate them and roll a carrot shape using a pea sized piece of orange fondant. Dust cheeks using a small amount of Rainbow dust rose (or pearl blush pink for a lustre effect)

Glue the carrot nose to the face in a position as shown, about halfway between the smile ends and no more than halfway up the face. Make sure you have left enough room to place eyes, angle the nose outwards then up if needed. Dot eyes using some black gel-paste and a toothpick. The toothpick dipped into the gel-paste then poked gently into the face gives even and controlled dots.

Make some royal icing to your own recipe or by beating 1 size 6 egg white and approx. 1-1.25 cups of icing sugar together. I beat the egg white until foamy then add the icing sugar in two lots. This used about 1 cup but if you wish to have a stiffer mix to hold piped ruffled shapes you will need to add a little more. Pipe eyebrows starting with a heavy dot at the end and then drag to get a thin brow shape. I have used a disposable bag with a tiny cut at the end.

Cut some holly using the smaller of the three leaf holly ejector plunger cutter set  and glue to the face.

Indent the holly with a ball tool or the end of a paintbrush/whatever is handy, this is to help stop the berries rolling off the leaves when it comes to placing them

Put a small amount of edible glue in the indent  and drop in a few red non-pareils between pinched fingers.  . Alternatively roll small balls of fondant for berries and place instead of the sprinkles. Another option is to pipe small red royal icing balls and in this case you don’t need to indent the leaf. If you have placed too many sprinkles use a dry brush to flick off excess or push into better positions.

 NOTE : you can use normal fondant for all but fondant stiffened with tylo will make your work so much easier as it will easily keep its shape while working and dry quickly. You need to use enough tylo to get a bluetack feel to the icing.