Sometimes I wonder...

When I was in college, I went to the local thrift store to pick up some cookie cutters to make Christmas cookies for my sorority.  I found these interesting cookie cutters that had a pattern on the inside to give the cookies detail.  At the time I didn't have much success using them to actually imprint the cookies, but it didn't prevent me from buying them whenever I saw them.

Fast forward more than a decade.... and a friend of mine asks me to squeeze her in for some circus cupcakes for her little boy's first birthday.  I was already booked, but since she is my best customer, I squeezed her in.  I knew I wanted to do some sort of clown, but figured I would just make several cutouts and assemble them into a clown head.  However, in my quest to pick up glass containers (in another post), I stopped by one of the thrift stores near my house and stumbled across a clown cookie cutter with the imprint inside.  It seemed to be the perfect size for cupcakes and was the perfect price (25 cents).

I rolled the fondant out about 1/8 of an inch thick and stuck the cutter in.  Of course, the fondant wasn't thick enough and didn't leave the impression.  It dawned on me that I had tried this before and had the same result.  In that case I just ended up decorating the fondant cut out by hand.  But this past weekend, my brain actually worked... which seems to be happening less and less lately. So here's what I did... I used the cutter to cut out the outline.

Then I pushed the fondant piece inside of the cutter and pushed it against the impression on the inside of the cutter.

The first time I did it, I had to use a toothpick to get it back out, but the second time I brushed a bit of cornstarch in the cutter and it fell right out.  I even rolled the fondant out to about 1/16th of an inch and they came out just as well.

I needed them to dry so I could color them... and thankfully the oven light did the trick.

Within a few hours, they were hard enough to color and I think made a pretty cute cupcake topper!  I
can't believe it took me this long to figure this out!

PS  If you find any of these cutters that aren't for Halloween or Christmas... I WANT THEM!