Gingerbread decorated with stencilled fondant

One of the staple treats of Christmas in many countries is the spiced cookie.  Accordingly, I felt that I had to have at least one type of spiced cookie in my Christmas boxes again this year.  The natural choice for me was gingerbread. 

I decided to use Margaret Fulton's gingerbread men recipe from Margaret Fulton Christmas, which you can also find online here.  However, instead of gingerbread men, I cut my gingerbread into discs that I could decorate.  Inspired by my CW Cakes cupcake decorating course, I wanted to use the technique of stencilling fondant to decorate my gingerbread cookies.

I bought these stencils and Bakels white and chocolate fondant, and made my own royal icing and made some of it very thick and slurry-like and tinted green, while I left the rest white and of a thinner consistency.

To decorate the cookies, I rolled out pieces of fondant just large enough to cover  a cookie.  I then pressed the stencil down over the icing firmly, then using a thick paint brush, dabbed the green royal icing over the stencil. Using a straight edged pastry scraper, I removed the excess icing from the stencil. Next, I sprinkled gold edible disco glitter over the wet royal icing by tapping a glitter laden brush over the top of the icing, then carefully lifted the stencil. I then let the icing set a little.

I used the same cookie cutter that I used to make the cookies to cut out rounds of stencilled fondant.  Using a spatula, I spread the thinner white royal icing onto a cookie, then carefully placed the fondant disc over the icing and tamped down the edges carefully.  Voila!

I had some good feedback on these cookies, independently by two recipients, so I was pleased.  These cookies were definitely the most fun thing to make out of this year's Christmas boxes, and they allowed me to show off my new stencilling skill.

Tips:  Scrape off as much icing as possible from the stencil between cookies, as the icing dries and clogs up the stencil.  Keep your icing well covered (fondant and royal icing) to stop it from drying out.