Since I was doing this in a time-frame that didn't allow me to find and purchase actual Mario cookie cutters in time, I sort of had to improvise (much like the first Pinner who clearly used just a star and round cookie cutter). And, unlike the last Pinner, I'm clearly not a professional. I used my grandma's cutout cookie recipe. I think it's pretty straightforward that just about any cutout recipe will work for this project. The tricky part is getting the shapes and decorations right.
I'll start out with the mushrooms, since those were the most tricky. I used an antique biscuit cutter. It's a round cutter with a removable round center (this is so you can make donuts with it). You could also use a circle cookie cutter and a smaller circle. I started by removing the smaller circle and having the two pieces separate (after all, I'm not making donuts here ;) ).
After rolling out the dough, I cut out a big circle using the large circle cutter.
I removed the smaller 3/4 circle from the larger circle.
Next, I used the smaller circle cutter to remove the remaining dough from the bottom of the larger circle. This essentially made a half circle. For most of the mushrooms I tried to leave a little more dough on the sides so they could be rounded down as the mushroom top.
After that, it was just a matter of assembling the mushroom. I turned the smaller "circle" around so that the flat bottom connected to the larger half circle. Then I molded the mushroom top around the edges so it didn't look so ragged. Here is what the mushrooms looked like before being baked. The smaller round pieces were cut out using the same small circle cutter I used for the mushrooms and the others using a small star shaped cookie cutter. These will be decorated as coins and stars later.
I also made some Yoshi and Fire Flower cookies. For the Yoshi's I used a Santa hat cookie cutter. For the Fire Flowers I used the same large circle cutter as I used for the mushrooms. I then used a knife to cut out a small slice from the top of each circle. I cut the slice like you would a piece of pie or pizza. Since my red food coloring doesn't taste so great, I opted to decorate the Fire Flowers using red sprinkles. These were sprinkled on prior to baking. (ignore the bow-ties, I just made a couple of those for fun).
After baking all the cutouts it was time to decorate! I used a simple powdered sugar and milk frosting and added food coloring for each of the different colors. Use what frosting you feel most comfortable with.
I started with the Fire Flowers. I used white frosting to make the lips and dots.
Then I added green frosting to make the leaves.
The easiest way to make lines and dots with frosting (as opposed to covering the entire cookie) is to put the frosting in a ziplock baggie (removing all the air) and then cutting a hole in one of the corners. You then use the baggie like a pastry bag!
I used this same technique, along with several combinations of colors, to decorate the rest of the cutouts. In many cases I put one color of frosting over another. With the frosting I used it was easiest to do this by letting the first layer dry before adding another color. If you don't do this the colors will run together.
I'm clearly not an expert and some of Yoshi's colors were a little off. This was mostly because I wanted to avoid using red frosting (due to the icky taste I mentioned earlier) and had to improvise. All in all I don't think they turned out too bad! I got lots of complements at the party and they tasted delicious!
Here are some close ups of the finished product:
Thanks for reading! I can't wait to share my next Pin adventure with you!
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