How to Make 3-D Lizard (or Dragon?!) Cookies

[Music] hi juliia your recipes for Sweet Life in a recent video I made this cool 3D Castle cookie which makes a striking centerpiece for a child's birthday and in this video I'm going to make an equally cool project though a lot smaller I'm going to make these fun 3D lizards kind of lazy lizards if you will they look a little sleepy but they're of a perfect scale for a birthday party favor they also involve little to no icing they're just textured dough and a little bit of fondant so they're easy enough for you to make yourself or for you to just make the component parts and have the kids assemble them at the birthday party they also make use of a product that I've been having a lot of fun with lately the sugar Veil line of products in addition to making the sugar Veil lace material they make silicone mats for making the lace but the mats also come in handy for texturing dough I've used their meshes mat here to create this very lifelike lizard skin so let's talk about what cookies you'll need for this project basically it's a seven cookie project you'll need one 3-in Dome that's been textured again I'm working with sugar Veil mats and this is textured with their mesh mat and I'll show you that in a second you'll need a little piece for the head also textured with a me mesh mat two matching feet for either side a back hunch and a front hunch also textured with the mesh mat and then the tail which is formed using another form of cookie mold along the way I'll be calling for other things to create this finished end product I'll be calling for various luster dusts luster sprays and fondant for the fin and Horn so I'll introduce those items as we go along you can also see the full list of them and the what you'll need list that's popping up on the video screen so let's talk about how how we got some of these fun shapes but let's start with the easy one which is the tail it does not use the sugar Veil mat instead it uses a normal I think it's a cream horn mold for making cookies and I can get two tails out of this piece so I'm just going to pack it this particular mold's ovenproof and I always get the best imprints when I bake in molds in the oven so I'm just going to pack it till it's flat not worry and try to get it as fitted into the inside as possible cuz that'll mean less trim when it comes out of the oven and that'll go in the oven bake at the normal 375 for about 10 minutes cool slightly pop it out and then if I need to here's a finished piece if there's any extra that didn't pack to the inside of the mold or if I just want to give it a little more Contour I can take my pairing knife and trim that up a little bit and get two out of it the other thing I've done is I've sculpted the end so that it fit will fit nicely against the rounded shape of the lizard's body later now I'm going to turn to the other pieces which are all textured namely the head the body and the various feet and show you how I created those using the sugar Veil mat which is normally used for making edible cake lace but we're going to use it instead for embossing the dough here's the actual mat we're going to use it's called their mesh mat it's only ovenproof up to 350° fahr so that's why I'm creating imprint then transferring the pieces off the mat onto a cookie sheet and baking them that way CU we bake at 375 typically this particular recipe first thing I want to do get my rolling surface ready and for that I use a silicone baking mat typically I'm going to get my dough I'm working with my gingerbread dough the recipe can be found in the video description other dos will work as long as they don't have a lot of leving and spread because if they spread too much you'll lose the texture so I just want to get this started and still be able to lift it in nicely in one piece I'm keeping flour off the top surface because this is going to going to go down face down on the mat and I don't want to press flour into the dough that I'm embossing now you'll notice on this Dome piece I've got the wide part of the mesh coming right down his back so I want to make sure that when I cut that piece I cut you know when when I press the dough into the mat that I do Center it if I've got a small piece of dough on the piece that I want to capture I'm just going to put that piece of dough down face side down flower side up dust the back side a little bit more so my pin doesn't stick to it and roll it pretty thin because the thinner it is the better it ends up looking typically now I do like to invert this once again on my silicone baking mat so this can go I can cut directly on this and this can go directly in the oven from here and without any flowering you'll notice how nicely the sugar Veil mat pulls right off I'm going to be shaping the body over this dome which is about 3 in but I need a bigger round cutter in order to get all the way around the Dome so this cutter is actually about 4 in I'm going to save these extra pieces because we'll use them to cut the other head and feet hopefully and if I've nicely flowered my silicone mat that should lift right off I'm going to bring this Dome forward and I can just drape this over the top now there's a lot of slack and extra excess you want to just gradually work that down to the edge you want to get it centered on top just moved a little bit without pressing out the pattern and so for that I need to lift it and look at it a little more closely just gently pressing I do want a pretty ample body so I want to work out as much of those pleats as I can without pressing out the pattern so here it is now all pressed out I worked all the pleat out without working out much of the pattern this would then go directly on the baking sheet and bake at 375 and then be popped off as I normally pop off my contoured cookie dough so let's talk about the feet they're pretty easy to do and I cut them from what whatever dough is left the texturing there to me is less going to be less noticeable less visible so I don't worry about it coming right down the center we'll cut out the two teardrop shapes the dimensions of these teardrops will be in the video description and I need two for each side and these will get formed fitted up against the side of the round as they bake kind of like so give them a little twist so they hold their shape in the oven I also if you'll notice here flattened the bottom of the back hunch just a little because I wanted it to sit flat against the bottom of the body of the animal when it's done so I would just fit those up against the side again slide that onto a silicone baking mat and put them all in the oven lastly let's talk about the shaping of the head for that I use a little Walnut Mo mold again this is for shaping cookies and we are just going to cut kind of a half circle don't worry if it's a little ragged I'll trim this up once it gets up onto the mold out of the remaining remaining dough and just fit it over the end the pointy part of this Walnut is going to be end up being the nose so shape it like so I'm going to come back in cut off a bunch of excess that we don't need also around the bottom gently Pat it down and then that's also ready to be baked if you want a slightly more pointy nose you can do some of that tweaking after after it comes out of the oven when the dough is still warm just gently mold it while the dough is soft now here are all the pieces formed and ready to go into the oven one note on this I typically tend to bake like pieces at the same time so do all the heads at once on one tray because they'll bake at closer to the same rate than some of these bigger and deeper pieces like the tail might take a little longer because it's pretty deep as well as the Dome might because it's pretty large so if you're doing many of them do like sizes at the same time otherwise you can put them in the oven like this and just watch them closely those that tend to Brown more quickly like the little pieces The Head and the feet may need to be pulled sooner than some of the others off to the oven they go so I want my lizard to be my lizard or Dragon whatever it is to be somewhat shiny so the first step that I did was start by taking these naked parts and spraying them with my Pearl luster spray again I'm working with a pme brand spray so you want to give it a good Shake first I usually do a piece at a time so I'll move off the big pieces do the small pieces first and give it a test spray and then work in small circular motions now the advantage of an actual airbrush is it comes out with less pressure than some of these can sprays so the pieces are less likely to move around I'm going to Anchor these with my hands just a little bit so they don't move around on me so much of course I'm airbrushing me a little bit or get it a further slightly further distance just going to give it one last touchup here where I see some exposed Brown parts and there are all the lizard pieces done I'm not worried about the back side of the feet because they'll ultimately be stuck against the body okay so we're ready to give the guy a little color and what I've got set up here as a little paint palette into this dish I have just my Straight Up liquid gel leaf green coloring which I'm going to do a dark green stripe down the middle and then I'm going to then pale that out with a little bit of yellow to do more of a lime green stripe around the underbelly of the lizard now I don't want to put it down straight up just solid green because it'll be very very dark so I've thinned it in this area with a little bit of extract you can also use water but I find that the extract evaporates more quickly and is less likely to kind of really dampen the cookie so I'm using a sponge brush for this technique getting some color on there but also sponging off the excess before I put too much on the lizard because I just want a slight accent of green and I'm going to start by just sponging gently up and down motion rather than a sliding motion because with the sliding motion I can get a lot of dark green into the lower areas and I'm just trying to keep it mostly on the high points if I can sometimes I'll do a little bit of a side to side motion but only if I know I don't have a lot of color on the on the sponge brush because I don't want to get too much in those recesses so we're going to continue all down the center area with that and as I use a paint I'm going to have to mix a little bit more it's nice to have a test cookie near you to try the color on which I always do before you put it on your finished product get a little more on the sponge brush going to blot it dry it is a little bit darker so I may end up going over the whole thing a little bit more any unevenness in color like that amount there I'll probably you know it's fine it looks a little more natural but I may I'll tend to even it out a little bit more because I'm going to apply some just dry dust at the end to just kind of even out any variations in color okay so I think the green on the top is kind of nice it's a little softer than the example I off to the side but that'll do for lizard and it's still shiny so you still see a lot of that Pearl dust coming through now without much cleaning I'm just going to add some yellow like quite a lot of yellow to this I might actually mix off to it might actually mix off to the other side and take my brush that had yellow on it and create more of a lime green color for here for the the belly I'm going to blot a little bit here and just start by sponging lightly rather than spreading so again it's more of an up and down motion less spreading to keep it out of the low Parts a little bit in the low Parts looks good now i' finish these feet in the same way maybe just with a little bit of light green same thing with the head the tail also I'm just putting a little light green highlights on the top and here I'm using a little more of a spreading motion I just want to get the high points the ridges on the tail oops and I'm finding that a gentle kind of swipe gets them pretty fast guess my hands too but that's okay okay so the tail is done the feet are done and I do the head in the same way as I would do the body if you feel like the color gradations are too abrupt or you've lost some Sheen you can come back in with dry dusts I've got a super green CK a yellow and also a pearl you can come in with dry dust and dry brushes to sort of enhance color if you feel like you need to to blend colors between areas and to add a little more Sheen I feel like this one looks really good the way it is so I'm really not going to do much of that typically I just dump a little dust on my work surface out of the container get it on the brush tap it off so I don't have a ton on the brush and just apply it one area where it might be useful to have a little more blending is through here so I'll take a little of that dark green and just smudge it along the seams when I run out of dust I just rather than taking it directly out of the receptacle each time with the brush and potentially contaminating it I put it on my work area and brush from here now let's talk about some of the embellishments that have gone on this guy here I've got some fondant pieces that were laid on namely the horns are done in a dark green fondant this color here we've got a fin that's going down in a light green fondant it's going to get a little airbrushing and we've got eyes that are made out of the dark green fondant black fondant and also some little yellow candy balls so I want to start by making the eyes and the horns because they need to dry completely before they go on the lizard whereas as the fin gets applied when it's still able to be molded and shaped so the fin will get made last right as we're assembling the pieces the whole lizard okay so for the horns simply take a little green fondant and just create a tapered rope basically you can do this either on your cutting board or in your hands pretty successfully and I like to do one really long one big one for the center right between the eyes and then taper them off so they get smaller and smaller as they come towards the side of his head so this might be one for the center we'll set them off to the side you could cut one down that's already big to create a smaller one so really easy to make those horns and you'd want to make six or seven of them to go all the way around his head I've got some pre-made that are already dry that we'll attach in a moment now for the eyes they look a little funny here but this is how they're going to be placed side by side so you don't see any of this sort of seam on the back I chose to use little yellow candy beads these are about a 5 mm bead is my guess they're a little bigger than the normal Dr and for them I've rolled out a little bit of black fondant to the number three setting on my pasta machine so I've got a nice piece of green rolled fondant as well and this is going to form the eyelid okay so first things first let's cut out the the pupil of the eye with the black and for that I'm using a tiny tip I don't have a cutter that small so I'm using a number five tip round tip and it tends to like to stick in there so to push it out I push it out with a paintbrush something that's not going to leave a big dent in it we're going to need two of those for these eyeballs for both sets so let's get them out they look small now but I'm going to press them slightly into the eyeball so it will will get a little flatter and bigger as we go through that process I also want to cut out my eyelids for that I'm using the other side of the tip and I'm just going to cut that in half so I can get two eyelids out of each round now taking a little bit of moving the beads aside bringing in a little corn syrup just a touch I'm going to put a touch in the center and that's where I'm going to attach attach my pupil if it's hard to pick up take take the tip of your dresing needle place it on there and then I like to press it down a little bit just to round it out a touch and to flatten it closer to the eye so same thing to get the eye lid on similar process I'm going to take my eyelid turn it over to the back side put a little bit of corn syrup on it to act as glue I don't need much and I'm going to cover like about half I like to cover whoops about half of the pupil with the eyelid just so he looks kind of like a sleepy lizard then I just simply shape press all the extra green to the back of the eye and if there's a lot of extra you can kind of pull some of it off but this is you just want to shape it so as it's looking at you it looks like a nice shape and he's completely wrapped in eyelid and I like that so that'll be one eyeball and that's basically how I would do the other one I'd like to set those aside to dry till they're easier to handle at least partially dry because they'll be less likely to misshape when we actually get them on the lizard so now to make the fin that's going to run down the back and the tail I'm working with a light green fondant and by contrast to the pieces I just made where I rolled it out to like a number three or number four setting and got it really thin I've rolled it only to my number one setting which is about an eighth of an inch thick because I want this to have enough body that even when it's not dry I can Flex it up and Contour it to the back of the lizard so I need to work with this while it is not completely set now to do this I've rolled it out as I said and I'm going to use this fluted round cutter that I just happened to have to cut these pieces I've got one that I finished earlier and it completely set and so this is going to be hard to fit to the body of another one but that gives you an idea of the direction I'm headed so I'm cutting the edge and we're going to add some Contours you'll also notice that I want the fin to be thicker in the middle and kind of taper down towards the head and the tail so to do that I've got another round cutter that I'm going to use to do that I'm just placing placing it such that I have it tapered at the front and the bottom okay and I think I'm going to need a little extra piece for the tail and so I'm going to cut another little Ridge in the extra here and just cut this a little shallower it doesn't need to be nearly as thick and in fact I'll cut it to a nice point at the end so that'll be the end of the tail and this will be somewhat towards the top we'll trim these more as they get onto the body of the animal in the next step but to add this Dimension I I just wanted to show you what I did I simply scored with my pairing knife you can also use like a pizza wheel to run through here but you don't want to go all the way through or you'll cut through the fin and you don't want to do that and you can do this to back to both sides of the fins here on video I'm just doing it to one but on the lizards that I have in demo I did it to both sides so that it views nicely from either angle so now we're ready to airbrush these and then instead of using Color Mist which you could use color Mist comes in a can and green I'm using an actual air brush because you can get much more control with it much more precise placement and it doesn't push with nearly the same Force if you have it on low speed low compressor speed so this isn't going to blow around quite as much so I'm using my particular airbrush which is a single action airbrush and operates on three levels and I'm going to turn it on now and and I'm going to be spraying at kind of a 45 Dee angle just to kind of shoot up each of these little lines that I scored to give it a little green burst of green but I'm going to do this on the lowest setting so it doesn't fly around too much so here it goes trying to roughly line the get it to spray right on the line which is a little tricky so you get the feeling for it and now I feel like I I've got it coming along just add a nice kind of lifelike kind of highlight I'm kind of spraying sideways you can see it doesn't get nearly as Airborne as some of those other sprays that I've been working with if I can get a little darker at the base that's kind of nice too feel like this one needs a little more Darkness there maybe there too there too whoops now he really needs to be held down just because it's a much lighter weight piece yeah that looks good and now if I were doing both sides I wait for those to dry a few minutes flip them over and do the exact same thing okay so my now that the Fin's done and it's fin REM mind you is still pliable it has to be or I won't be able to get it up on the lizard the first thing I want to do is get it mounted on so I'm just going to use a teeny bit of thick royal icing green glue to get it in place very very little you'll see how nicely it conforms to the top of the Dome if any is sticking out I can clean that up later we're just going to Anchor it in a couple of spots really at the top and also at the bottom the back side cuz that's all that's really needed and the less glue I have to clean up the better and I'm going to I've situated it such that my head should come in right about here so that's good it's got a little bit of a turn on it which I kind of like I'm going to Anchor it down here as well and then the next thing to do is to cut off the extra and put the head into it while it's still wet so that we don't crack the fondant and if this shifts we can just lean it back a little bit until it fully sets so for this again a little bit of green glue get all those pieces in place and you'll notice I'm working on a cardboard again for the very good reason that you don't want to move this thing until all the pieces are completely completely dry this extra glue it's okay if it shows there because I'm going to put some horns there to conceal that the next piece I want to get on is the tail again while the fondant is still pliable so I'm going to be pushing it into here I can cut off some of this down here to make room for it and we'll glue that right up against the edge I'm looking over head just to make sure he's somewhat centered I've got this little tail piece that can go down the tail as well or not that's completely optional I think to do it I want to cut it a little bit shorter it's it's wanting to break at a certain point anyway because it's a little dried out you have to move kind of fast with this and I'm going to I'm going to piece it in from the back so it looks more continuous with the with the fin that I just put down again just tacking it with glue where needed as little glue as I'm using you'll be amazed when it's completely set it should all conform in one nice piece and I'm just shaping it along the top of the tail and attacking it at the very end so it kind of follows the Contour there it's nice to score the both back sides of the fin so this views nicely from both sides which I haven't done here but I'll show you it on the finished piece so there he is taking shape next step is to put down these big horns having a little bit of fondant there for it to rest up against is nice because it'll tend to hold it in place now mind you these horns are completely dry so I'm actually applying a fair bit of pressure to hold them in place and you can line them all up straight or put them at little odd angles to each other I like them a little bit angled cleaning up kind of extra glue there at the base and I'm I started with a big one and I'm kind of tapering off to smaller and smaller ones as we go to the sides looking pretty good let me get that foot on now and we'll get the other side of horns and then we'll put on the eyes and any finishing touches so these eyes that we made earlier I'm just sticking down with a little more Royal iing glue and I want him kind of looking at me so I'll turn him towards you when I'm done because I'm positioning his eyes so he's kind of looking like he's little lazy sleepy lizard great and so for the last details just to clean it up a little bit and to give it some little highlights because it's mostly all green we're going to turn back to my handy icing of bead work consistency and lay down some orange dots and yellow dots and ideally I would wait for everything to be completely dry before I do this because there's some chance of knocking things off in this process again all my icing consistency adjustments can be found in the link in my video description and you could detail him any number of ways so get creative if you're going to do this project this Project's one you could do assemble completely and give us favors at a birthday or you could just make the components and have the kids kind of put them them together at the party it's kind of a fun project that way too let's see if I can get the orange on these horns they're still loose so I don't want to knock them off so there he is with his orange dots I'm going to do some yellow dots now as a finishing touch down through the center and let's just make sure this icing is a little looser than the last I had the last was leaving some Peaks that I didn't quite like I think that's good and I'm going to start them very tiny down here and get them kind of gradually fatter as they move towards the center of the lizard it's nice to have your cones pretty full for this task so that you can reach into these harder to reach places and there you have it the One Last Detail I have over I have actually a fondant feet on the one over here but we're going to skip them I think he looks good with just the feet as they are I did also stick in a few little yellow dots down here around the face again to kind of conceal the joints between the horns I think that finishes it off rather nicely and there he is lazy lizard all finished and so once completely dry believe it or not even with that minimum amount of glue the lizard is something that you can pick up and then Place into crumbs I've got him arranged here in graham cracker crumbs normally though I'd keep them on the cardboard until I'm ready to arrange him so I hope you enjoyed making this lazy lounge lizard as much as I did if you're interested in more textured cookie videos please check out my castle video and also my enameled cookie Box video which is part of a bigger sugar Veil collaboration until next video live sweetly

Channel: JuliaMUsher

Views: 28,231

Keywords: Food & Drink, Lizard (Animal), 3-D cookie lizard, how to make a 3-D dinosaur cookie, how to make a 3-D lizard cookie, Jurassic World cookies, Jurassic Park (Award-Winning Work), how to texture and shape cookie dough, kid's cookies, 3-D dragon cookie, How to, how to make, tutorial, cookie, decorated cookie, cookie decorating, decorating techniques, Julia M Usher, Recipes for a Sweet Life, Ultimate Cookies, Cookie Swap, baking, decorating, desserts, sweets

Id: 1yn1asYPe5Y

Length: 30min 14sec (1814 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 11 2015