Friendly reindeer Christmas fondant icing tutorial

Continuing on with our 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 reindeer

Roll stiffened fondant with tylo or gumpaste  out to a depth of around 4-5 mm thick. Overlay with a piece of gladwrap and stamp out required amount of heads using the reindeer head from the Wilton set of mini Christmas cookie cutters The gladwrap softens and rounds the edges. You don’t need to do this, its just a nice effect. The glad wrap will more than likely distort the antlers but they are to be removed. Using the end of the cutter  as shown remove the antlers and soften cuts if needed.

Using a medium snowflake plunger cutter  cut out some black snowflakes and cut in the positions shown into three pieces each snowflake. You don’t need to emboss the detail on the snowflakes. Glue to the back of the reindeer head as shown.

Using a knife press down in the position shown to accentuate mouth/jaw

Using the knife tip mark ears as shown and mark mouth on the jaw using the end of a scallop/arc/similar tool 

Glue a rolled ball of red for his nose quite low on his face near his jaw (approx. pea sized) . I have slightly squashed mine into a oval shape which isn’t essential – just my preference. Dust cheeks right at their edges using a small amount of Rainbow dust rose (or pearl blush pink for a lustre effect) 

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. I have dotted mine close to the nose and close together. The closer they are the cuter they are.

Cut some holly using the smaller of the three leaf ejector plunger cutter set and glue to the face and 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. See snowman friend photo above for how to do this.

NOTE : You can use normal fondant for all toppers, 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.